WOMAN   IN    AMERICA. 


WOMAI  II  AMERICA: 


HER  WORK   AND  HER  REWARD. 


MARIA  J,  MCINTOSH, 

AUTHOR  OF  "  CHARMS  AND  COUNTER-CHARMS,"  "  TO  SEEM  AND 
TO  BE,"  ETC.  ETC. 


"The  ancients  looked  towards  the  land  of  the  setting  sun  as  to  a  land  of 
promise,  where  the  earth  puts  forth  fruits  for  eternal  life ;  and  surely  the  home 
of  the  Hesperides  must  have  features  and  beauty  of  its  own,  and  a  calling  not 
known  to  the  old  world." 

F.  BREMER. 


NEW  YORK: 
D.  APPLETON  &  COMPANY,  200  BROADWAY. 

PHILADELPHIA  : 

GEO.  8.  APPLETON,  104  CHESNUT-STREET. 
M  DCCC  L. 


Entered,  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1850, 
BY  D.  APPLETON  &  COMPANY, 

In  the  Clerk's  Office  of  the  District  Court  of  the  United  States  for  the  Southern 
District  of  New  York. 


CONTENTS. 


Page 

CHAPTER  L — NATURAL  PRINCIPLES,  AND  THEIR  APPLICATION  TO 

MORAL  SUBJECTS 13 

CHAPTER  II. — WOMAN — HER  OFFICES  AND  HER  POWERS 21 

CHAPTER  III. — GOD  IN  HISTORY — THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 30 

CHAPTER  IV. — FEUDALISM  AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES 42 

CHAPTER  V. — SOCIAL  LIFE  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES 55 

CHAPTER  VI. — SOCIAL  EVILS* — WOMAN  THETR  REFORMER 62 

CHAPTER  VII. — CHRISTIAN  CIVILIZATION 82 

CHAPTER  VIII.— THE  WEST 9t 

CHAPTER  IX. — THE  SOUTH 110 

CHAPTER  X. — THE  NORTH-EASTERN  AND  MIDDLE  STATES — CON- 
CLUSION   127 


1225876 


INTRODUCTION. 


HE  who  undertakes  to  mark  the  movements  of 
a  multitude,  who  would  decide  whither  their  steps 
tend,  and  judge  their  deviations  from  the  right 
path,  must  stand  above  them,  that  he  may  overlook 
their  course ;  and  some  such  elevation  may  seem 
to  be  claimed  by  her  who  seeks  to  awaken  the  at- 
tention of  her  countrywomen  to  the  mistakes  by 
which,  as  she  believes,  their  social  progress  is  im- 
peded, or  misdirected.  The  only  advantage  over 
those  whom  she  addresses  claimed  by  the  author 
of  the  following  pages,  however,  is  opportunity  for 
more  extended  observation  of  the  varied  forms  of 
social  life  in  her  own  land,  than  has  been  enjoyed 
by  many  of  her  sex. 

Bound  to  the  South — the  land  of  her  birth,  and 
the  home  of  her  childhood  and  youth — by  ties 
which  no  time  can  sever,  ties  knit  when  feeling 
was  strongest  and  association  most  vivid,  her  ma- 


12 


turer  and  more  reflective  years  have  been  -passed 
in  the  Northern  States  ;  and  here  kind  hearts  have 
been  opened  to  her,  and  friendly  hands  have  been 
extended  to  draw  her  into  the  sanctuary  of  their 
homes,  and  permit  her  to  become  a  pleased  witness 
of  the  "holy  revealings"  proceeding  from  those 
innermost  shrines  of  life.  Nor  has  her  observation 
been  confined  to  one  class,  in  these  her  different 
abodes.  She  has  been  permitted  to  take  her  views 
of  life,  now  from  the  position  occupied  by  those 
who  claim  the  "privilege"  of  idleness,  and  now 
from  that  of  those  whom  a  friendly  necessity  has 
constrained  to  yield  obedience  to  the  benign  law 
of  labor. 

Thus,  her  sympathies  with  all  have  been  culti- 
vated ;  and  if  somewhat  of  dogmatism  be  discover- 
able in  this  little  volume,  it  will,  she  hopes,  be 
pardoned  in  one  who  can  say  —  "We  speak  that 
we  know,  and  testify  that  we  have  seen." 

NBTW  YORK,  Jan.  IZth,  1850. 


WOMAN  IN  AMERICA: 

HER  WORK  AND   HER   REWARD. 


CHAPTER  I, 

NATURAL  PRINCIPLES,  AND  THEIR  APPLICATION  TO  MORAL 
SUBJECTS. 

HE  who  acknowledges  God  in  the  creation  of  our 
earth,  can  need  no  labored  argument  to  prove  that  He 
preserves  it  in  being,  and  rules  over  its  destinies.  Were 
all  things  around  us  fixed  and  changeless  in  their  char- 
acter, we  might  be  in  danger  of  forgetting,  or  overlook- 
ing the  present  Deity ;  but  our  existence  passes  amidst 
ever  varying  scenes.  Death  and  Life  are  unceasingly 
busy  around  us — the  one  resolving  all  things  into  their 
original  elements,  the  other  evoking  from  those  elements 
new  forms  of  grace  and  beauty.  Each  Spring,  the 
Spirit  of  God  moves  over  the  face  of  the  dead  earth, 
quickens  it  into  new  life,  decks  it  with  primeval  beauty, 
and  awakens,  from  the  silence  in  which  stern  winter  had 
bound  them,  all  the  sweet  harmonies  of  nature — the 
'  2 


14  WOMAN  IN  AMEKICA  I 

ripple  of  the  brook — the  dash  of  the  wave — the  low 
hum  of  the  bee — the  cheerful  chirp  of  the  insect — "  the 
charm  of  earliest  birds," 

"  That,  singing,  up  to  Heaven-gate  ascend," 
and  those  "  vernal  airs"  which, 

"  Breathing  the  smell  of  field  and  grove,  attune 
"  The  trembling  leaves." 

To  the  freshness  of  spring  succeeds  the  luxuriance  of 
Summer,  and  the  maturer  loveliness  of  Autumn,  whose 
first  gorgeous  coloring, 

"  The  gilded  halo  hovering  round  decay," 

fades,  even  as  we  gaze,  into  soberer  hues,  preparing  us 
for  the  last  great  change  effected  by  Winter,  which  by 
its  first  icy  touch  hushes  the  bounding  pulse  of  life  in 
"  Nature's  full,  free  heart,"  and  stripping  the  earth  of 
all  her  bright  array,  wraps  her  in  a  snowy  shroud,  and 
leaves  her  to  rest  in  the  solemn  beauty  of  the  grave. 

Thus  are  we  ever  reminded  in  the  natural  world  of  the 
presence  of  the  creating  and  guiding  Spirit ;  and  if,  in  the 
moral  world,  that  presence  is,  from  the  nature  of  things, 
less  obvious  to  the  senses,  are  not  the  arguments  for 
it  more  conclusive  to  the  reason?  Are  not  sentient 
and  intelligent  beings  of  more  value  than  the  fairest 


HEE  WOEK  AND  HEE  EETVAED.  15 

forms  which  no  spirit  animates  ?  Can  the  Infinitely  Wise 
thus  paint  the  flower,  provide  for  the  thirsting  earth  all 
the  soft  influences  of  sun  and  shower,  kindle  the  lights 
that  give  glory  to  the  solemn  night,  and  deck  the  blue 
arch  of  heaven  with  the  light  gauzy  clouds  that  veil  the 
mid-day  sun,  or  the  gorgeous  drapery  of  gold  and  crim- 
son behind  which  he  sinks  to  rest ; — shall  He  furnish 
the  lower  orders  of  the  animal  creation  with  an  unerring 
guide  whereby  they  may  secure  to  themselves  the  high- 
est good  of  which  they  are  capable,  and  avoid  all  those 
evils  that  threaten  then*  brief  existence ; — and  shall  man, 
the  being  created  in  His  own  image,  gifted  with  senses 
the  most  acute  and  intellect  the  most  far-reaching,  with 
a  physical  organization  through  which  he  has  become 
heir  to  a  thousand  ills,  and  a  spirit  whose  longings  are 
foreshadowings  of  that  immortality  for  which  a  Divine 
revelation  has  declared  him  destined — shall  he  be  nature's 
only  orphan,  finding  in  the  Universal  Father  but  a  con- 
scientious Ruler,  who,  having  arranged  the  mechanism 
of  His  government  on  just  and  sound  principles,  leaves 
him,  with  unpitying  eye  and  unhelping  hand,  to  work 
out  his  destiny  for  time  and  for  eternity  ?  Not  thus  did 
He  teach  who  questioned,  "  Shall  He  so  clothe  the  grass 
of  the  field,  which  to-day  is  and  to-morrow  is  cast  into 


16  WOMAN  IN  AMEEICA: 

the  oven,  and  shall  He  not  much  more  clothe  you,  O 
ye  of  little  faith  ?" 

This  is  a  subject  on  which  we  believe  there  is  more 
inconsideration  that  needs  to  be  aroused  to  thought,  and 
more  insensibility  that  requires  to  be  quickened  into 
feeling,  than  infidelity  to  be  convinced.  We  have  there- 
fore rather  sought  to  present  a  vivid  picture  of  the 
truth,  than  to  construct  an  argument  for  its  defence. 
But  if  it  be  admitted  that  the  Great  Spirit  who  presides 
over  the  natural  phenomena  of  our  world,  arranges  also 
its  moral  and  social  influences,  will  it  not  follow  that 
those  principles  which  are  invariably  manifested  in  the 
one  will  reappear  in  the  other?  If  it  be  acknowledged 
that  man,  with  his  powers  of  thought  and  feeling  and 
action,  with  his  ever- extending  capacities  and  limitless 
desires,  is  not  less  cared  for  by  Him  than  the  lily  of  the 
field  which  He  clothes  with  such  delicate  beauty,  or  the 
bird  which  He  sustains  in  the  air,  may  we  not  believe  that 
at  least  equal  excellence  of  design  and  carefulness  of 
adjustment  will  be  discoverable  to  an  earnestly  attentive 
eye  in  those  arrangements  of  His  Providence  by  which 
the  character  and  the  destiny  of  the  one  are  so  greatly 
influenced,  as  hi  those  which  give  its  charm  to  the  brief 
existence  of  the  other  ? 


HER  TVOEK  AND  HEE  EETVAED.  17 

Now  let  us  glance  at  some  of  those  principles  which 
are  most  frequently  discoverable  in  the  natural  world. 
The  first  of  these  that  presents  itself  to  our  observation 
is,  that  nothing  is  created  in  vain — that  from  the  sun, 
which  is  the  most  glorious  natural  type  of  Hun  whose 
smile  is 

"  the  life  and  light 
Of  all  this  wondrous  world  we  see," 

to  the  smallest  animalcule  that  sports  in  its  beams,  un- 
detected save  by  the  aid  of  the  most  powerful  micro- 
scope, each  has  been  created  for  a  specific  object,  for  the 
accomplishment  of  which  it  is  carefully  fitted.  So  far 
as  our  limited  faculties  permit  us  to  appreciate  the  facts 
of  nature,  existence  is  pleasurable  to  each  creature,  yet 
none  seems  to  have  been  created  only  to  enjoy.  In  his 
remarks  on  Dr.  Mantell's  interesting  work  on  animal- 
cules, Chambers  says :  "  Nor  is  this  a  study  the  result 
of  which  is  merely  amusement  and  wonder ;  for,  like  the 
minute  parasitic  vegetation  whose  growth  absorbs  the 
elements  of  decay,  and  which  occasionally  create  such 
havoc  among  human  food  and  engender  disease  and 
death,  the  myriad  animalcules  in  nature  may  execute 
similar  missions,  sometimes  repressing  putridity,  at  others 
2* 


18  WOMAN  IN  AMEEICA: 

becoming  the  sources  of  the  most  loathsome  and  fatal 
diseases." 

And  if  these  are  not  exempt  from  their  tasks — 
if  they  have  an  appointed  office  to  fulfil  in  the  labor- 
atory of  the  universe,  can  creatures  more  nobly  en- 
dowed be  intended  only  as  idle  consumers  of  the  gifts 
of  God? 

Another  principle,  which  has  been  so  often  demon- 
strated that  we  are  scarcely  permitted  to  doubt  its 
universality,  is,  that  in  those  objects  which  seem  to  the 
superficial  eye  formed  but  to  charm,  and  to  give,  by  their 
beauty  and  their  grace,  dim  intimations  of  fairer  and 
brighter  scenes,  there  dwells  some  ulterior  power,  ren- 
dering them  useful  as  well  as  ornamental.  '  He  who  goes 
forth  at  the  soft  hour  "  when  daylight  dies,"  and  watches 
the  bright  stars,  as  they  come  out  one  by  one  in  the  deep 
serene  of  night,  may  well  exclaim — "  How  beautiful !" 
But  is  this  all?  Can  any  one  now  believe  that  these 
were  created  but  to  adorn  this  fair  abode  of  man  ?  Has 
not  science  revealed  to  us  in  them  floods  of  being,  before 
the  mighty  imagination  of  which  our  weak  minds  sink 
appalled  ?  The  clouds  which  float  so  gracefully  across 
the  blue  vault  of  heaven,  "  deck  the  gorgeous  west  at 
even"  with  colors  that  defy  the  painter's  art,  or,  gather- 


HER  WORK  AND  HER  REWARD.      19 


ing  in  stormy  grandeur  around  the  mountain's  head,  add 
new  sublimity  to  nature,  bear  in  their  bosom  the  fertil- 
izing shower.  And  even  in  the  flower  which  rears  its 
graceful  head  in  our  path,  and  sheds  its  perfume  on  the 
air  we  breathe,  we  are  often  taught  to  recognise,  and 
may  always  suspect,  higher  uses  than  these. 

A  third  principle  in  the  arrangements  of  the  natural 
world,  and  the  last  which  we  shall  at  present  notice,  is 
that  beautiful  system  of  adaptation  by  which  each  object 
in  creation  finds  itself  in  that  position  for  which  its  pe- 
culiar organization  has  fitted  it,  and  discovers  in  its  offices 
the  exact  correlatives  of  its  powers. 

From  the  application  of  these  natural  principles  to  the 
moral  world,  it  will  follow,  first,  that  every  distinct  class 
of  moral  and  intellectual  beings  should  have — that  is, 
was  designed  to  have — a  specific  object  in  the  exercise  of 
its  powers,  in  its  moral  and  intellectual  life,  apart  from 
the  pleasure  of  that  exercise ;  secondly,  that  with  none 
can  this  object  be  merely  to  give  a  new  charm  to  the 
existence  of  others,  to  add  beauty  to  the  scenes  of  which 
they  make  a  part, — that  this  is,  in  truth,  only  a  necessary 
and  unconscious  result  of  their  faithful  performance  of 
their  true  and  allotted  work ;  and,  lastly,  that  this  work 
will  bear  such  a  relation  to  the  powers  and  position  of 


20  WOMAN  IN  AMERICA  ! 

the  actors,  that  it  may  be  easily  and  certainly  deduced 
from  them. 

It  is  the  object  of  the  present  work,  as  its  title  pur- 
ports, to  refer  these  principles  to  the  life  of  woman,  and 
especially  to  determine  from  her  position  in  America,  and 
her  powers,  as  developed  by  that  position,  what  is  the 
work  designed  for  her  here,  and  what  the  reward  which 
awaits  its  performance. 


HER  WORK  AND  HER  REWARP.  21 


CHAPTER  II, 

WOMAN HER    OFFICES    AND    HER   POWERS. 

How  many  eloquent  theses  have  been  written,  and 
how  much  logic  wasted,  to  prove  the  equality  of  the 
sexes !  It  seems  to  us,  that  the  writers  and  speakers  on 
this  subject  would  have  done  well  to  commence  by  de- 
fining their  terms.  What  is  meant  by  equality  as  here 
used  ?  Is  it  intended  to  convey  the  idea  that  the  soul  of 
woman  is  as  precious  to  the  Father  of  Spirits  as  that  of 
man ;  that  woman  has  an  equal  interest  with  man  in  all 
those  great  events  which  have  marked  the  dealings  of 
God  with  His  intelligent  creation  on  our  earth,  from  the 
hour  in  which  Adam,  awaking  from  a  deep  sleep,  found 
beside  him  the  companion  of  his  sinless  and  happy  life, 
to  the  present  moment,  when  the  sin-stricken  and  sor- 
rowing soul  of  man,  echoing  the  divine  conviction  that  it 
is  not  good  for  him  to  be  alone,  still  seeks  in  woman  his 
"help-meet"  in  the  labors,  the  trials,  and  sufferings  of 
mortality  ?  Are  we  to  understand  from  it  that  woman, 


22  WOMAN  IN  AMEKICA  I 

equally  with  man,  has  a  trust  committed  to  her  by  the 
Judge  of  all,  for  the  fulfilment  of  which  she  will  be  held 
responsible  ?  Can  these  things  be  matters  of  doubt  ? 
Were  not  Mary  and  Martha  loved  as  well  as  Lazarus  ? 
Did  not  the  soul  of  Anna  kindle  with  as  divine  an  inspi- 
ration as  that  of  Simeon,  when  she  held  in  her  arms  the 
infant  Saviour  ? 

Or  is  the  question,  whether  woman  exerts  an  equally 
important  influence  over  the  character  and  destinies  of 
our  race  ?  This  can  scarcely  be  a  question  to  one  famil- 
iar with  the  records  of  Paradise  and  of  Bethlehem. 

And  yet  the  unqualified  assertion  of  equality  between 
the  sexes,  would  be  contradicted  alike  by  sacred  and 
profane  history.  There  is  a  political  inequality,  ordained 
in  Paradise,  when  God  said  to  the  woman,  "  He  shall 
'rule  over  thee,"  and  which  has  ever  existed,  in  every 
tribe,  and  nation,  and  people  of  earth's  countless  multi- 
tudes. Let  those  who  would  destroy  this  inequality, 
pause  ere  they  attempt  to  abrogate  a  law  which  ema- 
nated from  the  all-perfect  Mind.  And  let  not  Avoman 
murmur  at  the  seeming  lowliness  of  her  lot.  There  is 
a  dignity  which  wears  no  outward  badge,  an  elevation 
recognised  by  no  earthly  homage.  This  wise,  and  for 
her  most  happy  inequality,  secludes  woman  from  the 


HEE  WOEK  AND  HEE  EEWAED.      23 

arena  of  political  contention,  with  its  strifes  and  rivalries, 
its  mean  jealousies  and  meaner  pretensions,  in  the  quiet 
home  where  truth  may  show  herself  unveiled,  and  peace 
may  dwell  unmolested.  •  She  hears  the  thunders  of  no 
battle-field  drowning  the  "still,  small  voice"  of  con- 
science echoing  the  divine  command,  "  Thou  shalt  do  no 
murder."  All  the  influences  of  that  lot  to  which  God 
assigned  her,  are  calculated  to  nurture  in  her  that  meek 
and  lowly  spirit  with  which  He  delights  to  dwell. 

Subjected  to  influences  so  diverse,  man  and  woman 
could  scarcely  have  preserved  entire  identity  in  then* 
spiritual  natures,  even  had  they  been  originally  the  same. 
But  that  they  were  so  will  seem  doubtful,  at  least,  to 
those  who  know  how  much  spiritual  manifestations — all 
we  can  know  of  spirit  here — are  dependent  upon  physical 
organization ;  and  who,  recognising  the  different  spheres 
of  action  appointed  to  man  and  to  woman,  recall  one  of 
the  general  principles  already  advanced,  viz.  that  each 
creature  in  the  universe  finds  itself  in  that  position  for 
which  its  peculiar  organization  has  fitted  it,  and  discovers 
in  its  offices  the  exact  correlatives  of  its  powers. 

Different  offices  and  different  powers — this  is  what  we 
would  assert  of  them,  leaving  to  others  the  vain  question 
of  equality  or  inequality.  Each  seems  to  us  equally 


24  WOMAN  IN  AMEEICA: 

important  to  the  fulfilment  of  God's  designs  in  the 
formation,  the  preservation,  and  the  perfection  of  human 
society. 

The  stout  heart  and  strong  hand  of  man  are  obviously 
needed  in  every  successive  stage  of  social  organization, 
from  its  earliest  attempts  to  the  highest  development  it 
has  yet  attained.  There  has  been  a  time  predicted,, 
indeed,  and  we  humbly  hope  there  are  already  tokens 
that  this  good  time  is  coming,  when  "the  wolf  shall 
dwell  with  the  lamb,  and  the  leopard  shall  lie  down  with 
the  kid,  and  the  young  lion  and  the  fatling  together,  and 
a  little  child  shall  lead  them ;"  that  is,  when  the  passions 
which  have  made  mankind  like  ferocious  animals  shall  be 
subdued,  and  a  little  child — the  type  of  love — shall  lead 
those  for  whom  bolts  and  bars  had  been  needed.  But 
till  that  period  arrive,  would  not  our  earth  be  as  one 
wide  Bedlam  were  it  not  that  the  strong  arm  of  govern- 
ment supplies  outward  restraints  for  those  who  have  no 
restraining  principle  within  ?  And  this  government — is 
it  not  clearly  man's  province  ?  Has  it  not,  been  commit- 
ted to  him  by  Heaven,  and  is  not  the  nature  with  which 
he  has  been  gifted  the  seal  of  that  commission  ?  Law 
is  an  uncompromising,  inexorable  power ;  can  it  be  the 
product  of  a  gentle  woman's  mind  ?  It  must  be  upheld 


HEB-WOBK  AST)  HER  EEWAED.  25 

by  a  force  which  will  prove  opposition  bootless^  does 
that  belong  to  woman  ? 

But  while  all  the  outward  machinery  of  government, 
the  body,  the  thews  and  sinews  of  society,  are  man's, 
woman,  if  true  to  her  own  not  less  important  or  less 
sacred  mission,  controls  its  vital  principle.  Unseen  her- 
self, working,  like  nature,  in  secret,  she  regulates  its 
pulsations,  and  sends  forth  from  its  heart,  in  pure  and 
temperate  flow,  the  life-giving  current.  It  is  hers  to 
warm  into  life  the  earliest  germs  of  thought  and  feeling 
in  the  infant  mind,  to  watch  the  first  dawning  of  light 
upon  the  awakening  soul,  to  aid  the  first  faint  struggles 
of  the  clay-encumbered  spirit  to  grasp  the  beautiful 
realities  which  here  and  there  present  themselves  amid 
the  glittering  falsities  of  earth,  and  to  guide  its  first  tot- 
tering steps  into  the  paths  of  peace.  And  who  does  not 
feel  how  her  warm  affections  and  quick  irrepressible 
sympathies  fit  her  for  these  labors  of  love?  As  the 
young  immortal  advances  in  his  career,  he  comes  to  need 
a  severer  discipline,  and  man,  with  his  unconceding 
reason  and  stern  resolve,  becomes  his  teacher.  Yet 

think  not  that  woman's  work  is  done  when  the  child  has 

r 
passed  into  the  youth,  or  the  youth  into  the  man.     Still, 

as  disease  lays  its  hand  heavily  upon  the  strong  frame, 
.    3 


26  WOMAN  IN  AMEKICA  : 

and  sorrow  wrings  the  proud  heart  of  man,  she,  "  the 
help-meet,"  if  faithful  to  her  allotted  work,  is  at  his  side, 
teaching  him  to  bend  to  the  storms  of  life,  that  he  may 
not  be  broken  by  them ;  humbly  stooping  herself,  that 
she  may  remove  from  his  path  every  '•'  stone  of  stum- 
bling," and  gently  leading  him  onward  and  upward  to  a 
Divine  Consoler,  with  whose  blessed  ministerings  the 
necessities  of  a  more  timid  spirit  and  a  feebler  physical 
organization  have  made  her  familiar. 

It  may  be  thought  that  we  have  already  penetrated  to 
the  heart  of  our  subject,  and  exhausted  all  its  capabil- 
ities ;  but  we  have,  in  truth,  only  touched  its  surface, 
giving  the  faintest  outline  of  those  distinctive  character- 
istics which  permit  us  to  consider  the  work  and  the 
reward  of  woman,  apart  from  that  of  man.  Let  it  be 
remembered,  that  to  every  thing  in  nature  there  is  a 
passive  as  well  as  an  active  aspect.  Thus,  while  woman 
does  much  to  form  the  nation,  'whose  council-halls  will 
bear  the  impress  of  those  forms  into  which  she  has 
greatly  aided  to  mould  its  homes,  the  nation,  the  laws, 
customs,  and  habits  of  the  society  in  which  she  dwells, 
will  do  much  to  form  her.  It  follows  from  this,  that 
while  the  grand  elements  of  character  which  distinguish 
woman  as  a  class,  are  the  same  everywhere  and  at  alj 


HER  WORK  AND  HEK  REWARD.  2*7 

times,  the  combination  of  these  into  the  individual  wo- 
man is  almost  infinitely  varied.  This  is  a  necessary 
result  of  that  often  iterated  principle,  that  the  great 
Author  of  nature  and  Disposer  of  the  circumstances  of 
human  life,  never  repeats  Himself. 

Go  out  into  the  forest  when  its  summer  foliage  makes 
its  recesses  dim  with  shade;  what  arithmetic  would 
suffice  to  number  the  leaves  which  dance  with  such  glad 
life  to  the  soft  music  of  the  south  wind  ?  As  well  might 
you  attempt  to  number  the  stars  of  heaven,  or  the  sands 
upon  the  seashore.  And  yet  we  doubt  whether  of  all 
those  countless  myriads,  two  could  be  found  so  exactly 
alike  that  no  difference  of  shape  or  shade  should  mark  to 
a  careful  observer  their  individuality.  Thus  is  it  with 
the  human  face ;  for  though  we  have  heard  of  doubles 
among  men,  that  is,  of  two  men  between  whom  there 
existed  so  perfect  a  resemblance  that  each  might  pass 
for  the  other,  we  suspect  that  could  they  be  placed 
together,  there  would  always  be  found  some  difference 
in  the  color  of  hair,  or  eyes,  or  complexion,  some  turn  of 
countenance,  some  frown  of  the  brow  or  smile  of  the  lip, 
peculiar  to  one  of  them, — distinctions  slight,  it  may  be, 
yet  sufficient  to  establish  the  personal  identity  of  each. 
And  thus,  we  believe,  too,  is  it  with  the  mental  features. 


28  WOMAN  IN  AMEEICA  : 

We  have  not  now,  however,  to  do  with  those  minute 
peculiarities  stamping  the  individual  character,  but  with 
those  more  widely  extended,  though  less  deeply  marked 
traits  which  we  term  national.  These  are  easily  recogni- 
sable in  the  physical  man.  There  are  few  who  cannot 
distinguish  at  a  glance  the  quick,  mercurial  Frenchman 
from  the  heavy,  slow,  but  deep-thinking  German,  or  the 
sturdy  Englishman,  less  quick  than  the  first,  less  pro- 
found than  the  last,  yet,  by  his  unwearied  perseverance, 
accomplishing  more  than  both  put  together.  We  be- 
lieve that  the  peculiar  social  and  political  institutions  of 
America  must  also  produce  a  'peculiar  modification  of 
character,  in  accordance  with  the  law  of  adaptation  al- 
ready stated.  Such  a  modification  has  indeed  been 
already  produced. to  a  certain  extent,  but  there  have 
been  counter-influences  which  have  greatly  limited  this 
result.  One  of  these  counter-influences  is  to  be  found 
in  the  frequent  and  easy  communication  with  other  lands 
attainable  in  the  present  day;  and  another  in  that — shall 
we  say  national  humility  ? — which  makes  us  ever  ready 
to  yield  our  own  sense  of  what  is  suitable,  convenient,  or 
agreeable,  to  the  caprices  of  a  leader  of  ton  in  London  or 
Paris. 

It  is  this  last  barrier  to  the  perfect  moral  adaptation 


HER  WORK  AOT)  HER  REWARD.  29 

of  American  women  to  American  society,  against  which 
whatever  influence  this  little  book  may  claim  will  be 
exerted.  We  would,  if  possible,  persuade  American 
women  to  look  at  those  points  in  their  own  condition 
which  distinguish  them  from  their  sex  elsewhere,  and 
from  this  their  favorable  position,  and  from  the  power  it 
confers  on  them,  to  augur  what  an  important  work-  has 
been  committed  to  them,  and  what  a  noble  destiny 
awaits  them  if  thev  are  true  to  that  work. 
3* 


30  WOMAN  IN  AMEEICA  : 


CHAPTER  III, 

GOD  IN  HISTORY THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE. 

IT  may  be  well,  perhaps,  before  taking  another  step  in 
our  argument,  to  pass  rapidly  over  those  by  which  we 
have  arrived  at  our  present  position.  The  first  assertion 
which  we  made  and  which  we  deemed  no  argument 
necessary  to  sustain,  was  that  the  Creator  was  likewise 
the  Governor  of  our  world,  and  therefore  that  we  might 
expect  to  find  the  great  principles  of  the  natural  world 
reasserted  in  the  moral.  On  a  survey  of  these  principles, 
we  found  that  nothing  was  created  simply  for  its  own 
enjoyment — that  every  creature  had  a  work  to  do  in  the 
great  laboratory  of  the  universe,  and  that  for  its  own 
peculiar  work  each  was  specially  adapted  by  its  organi- 
zation. 

From  these  natural  principles  we  inferred  that  each 
class  of  moral  and  intellectual  beings  had  also  its  appoint- 
ed task,  and  that  the  task  thus  allotted  to  man  and 


HER  WORK  AND  HER  REWARD.      31 

woman  differed  just  in  proportion  to  the  different  physi- 
cal organization  and  spiritual  development,  at  least,  re- 
ceived from  their  Creator  and  moral  Governor. 

Another  glance  at  the  natural  world  showed  us  an- 
other fact ;  viz.  that  the  great  Author  of  nature  never 
repeats  Himself,  but-  that  leaf  differs  from  leaf,  and  man 

from  man.     Let  us  dwell  for  a  moment  on  this  fact,  and 

• 
see  how  it  harmonizes  with  the  laws  already  announced. 

Each,  it  has  been  said,  has  his  appropriate  work  to  do, 
and  in  that  work  finds  the  exact  correlative  of  his  power, 
which  power  is  the  sum  of  his  natural  capabilities  and  of 
the  circumstances  in  which  he  has  been  placed,  and 
through  which  those  capabilities  must  be  developed  and 
exercised.  Now,  is  it  not  manifest  that  from  the  multi- 
plied combinations  resulting  from  the  diversity  of  capa- 
bilities and  of  circumstances,  we  have  the  source  of  a 
variety  in  character  and  office  limited  only  by  the  num- 
ber of  the  earth's  inhabitants  ? 

But  the  laws  of  the  great  Ruler  apply  no  less  to 
national  than  to  individual  existences.  He  sent  confusion 
among  the  Heaven-defying  builders  of  Babel,  that, 
driven  asunder,  they  might  people  remote  portions  of 
the  globe,  and  growing  into  nations  under  widely-differ- 
ing influences,  ^ach  might  be  moulded  into  that  form 


32  WOMAN  IN  AMEKICA  : 

necessary  to  render  it  the  agent  of  His  providence  for 
special  ends. 

-  Jt  would  be  interesting,  indeed,  holding  in  our  hands 
the  clue  furnished  by  this  principle  of  the  adaptation  of 
each  existence,  whether  individual  or  national,  to  its  ap- 
propriate work,  to  tread  the  inmost  recesses  of  the  laby- 
rinth of  history, — gathering  in  pur  passage  new  proofs  of 
the  goodness  and  wisdom  of  Him  who  ruleth  over  the 
inhabitants  of  earth,  new  cause  for  the  humble  pros- 
tration of  our  spirits  before  the  King  of  kings  and  Lord 
of  lords.  There  we  should  mark  how  amid  the  som- 
bre despotism  and  the  monster  worship  of  Egypt  had 
arisen  a  class  of  men,  whose  active  minds  desiring  some 
avenue  to  power  from  which  that  despotism  could  not 
debar  them,  had  sought  and  found  it  at  the  altar  of  the 
veiled  Isis,  Nature,  whose  secrets  were  typified  by  mys- 
tic rites  and  guarded  in  subterranean  temples.  We 
should  see  the  science  thus  acquired  wrought  into  more 
graceful  forms  by  the  polished  Greeks,  and  under  the 
comparative  freedom  of  their  institutions  we  should  find 
the  human  mind  trained  to  the  discussion  of  all  those 
great  questions  affecting  its  origin,  its  progress,  and  its 
destiny ;  and  by  that  very  discussion  the  depth  of  its 
darkness  and  the  necessity  of  a  Divine  Teacher  would  be 


HER  WORK  AND  HER  REWARD.  33 

revealed  to  us.  The  results  thus  obtained  we  should 
find  disseminated  over  the  world  by  the  indomitable 
power  and  boundless  ambition  of  the  haughty  Roman, 
and  the  way  thus  prepared  for  the  coming  of  Him  who 
should  be  a  "Light  to  lighten  the  Gentiles"  as  well 
as  "the  salvation  of  His  people  Israel."  And  in  this 
people  Israel  we  should  discover  the  most  indubitable 
proofs  of  Providential  arrangement, — sequestered,  as  they 
were,  from  all  other  nations,  their  race  preserved  uncor- 
rupted  amid  the  extremes  of  proud  elevation  and  of  de- 
feat, captivity,  and  exile,  that  the  Messiah  for  whom  they 
waited,  only  that  they  might  reject  him,  should  appear 
to  all  as  indeed  the  promised  Deliverer,  He  whom  their 
prophets  had  predicted,  and  the  antetypes  of  their  his- 
tory and  their  worship  had  alike  foreshadowed. 

So  far,  it  is  probable,  most  Christian  readers  of  history 
have  pursued  the  train  of  thought  designated.  But 
shall  we  pause  here  ?  Were  the  purposes  of  God  to- 
wards our  race  accomplished  with  the  coming  of -the 
Deliverer  ?  Had  they  been,  why  delay  the  last  act  of 
the  sublime  drama — the  end  of  all  things  ? 

Let  us  advance,  still  holding  that  clue  which  has 
guided  us  in  safety  so  far.  A  few  centuries  pass  away, 
during  which,  aided  by  the  consolidation  into  one  vast 


34  WOMAN  IN  AMEEICA  : 

empire  of  almost  the  whole  known  world,  and  by  the 
community  of  language  and  facility  of  intercourse  thus 
produced,  the  Christian  faith  has  extended  itself  nomi- 
nally to  nearly  all  the  nations  and  tribes  of  men.  Wher- 
ever the  Roman  standard  floats,  the  cross — the  symbol 
of  sinning,  suffering,  and  regenerated  humanity — has  met 
the  eye,  aroused  the  mind,  andtstirred  the  heart  of  man. 
But  that  symbol  has  become  the  badge  of  an  earthly 
domination.  The  Church,  grown  proud  in  her  prosperi- 
ty, thinks  no  more  of  "fulfilling  in  her  own  body  the 
measure  of  her  Lord's  sufferings," — of  devoting  herself  to 
the  object  for  which  He  lived  and  died — the  salvation  of 
mankind.  The  removal  to  Byzantium  of  the  imperial 
throne  had  left  to  the  visible  head  of  the  Church,  the 
Bishop  of  Rome,  the  supreme  temporal  authority  over 
the  Western  nations.  But  that  body,  which  was  the 
keeper  of  the  sacred  archives  whence  man  draws  the 
law  of  his  life  and  the  charter  of  his  immortality,  could 
not  be  suffered  to  merge  its  nobler  office  in  an  earthly 
sovereignty,  and  Rome  finally  succumbed  beneath  the 
repeated  attacks  of  those  barbarian  hordes  led  by  the 
"  Scourge  of  God"  upon  the  sunny  plains  of  Italy  from 
the  sounding  shores  of  the  Baltic,  and  the  recesses  of 
forests  dark  with  the  shade  of  ages.  And  here  we  see 


HER  WORK  A1STD  HER  REWARD.  35 

how,  through  the  "  darkest  woof"  of  national  as  well  as 
of  individual  life,  "  there  runs  the  golden  thread  of  love." 
The  Church  was  driven  back  to  her  own  proper  sphere ; 
she  no  longer  wielded  the  sword  of  temporal  power,  but 
as  the  vicegerent  of  God,  the  medium  through  which 
His  will  was  made  known  to  the  waiting  spirit,  she  ex- 
ercised soon  a  far  higher  sovereignty.  The  barbarian 
conqueror  bowed  at  her  footstool,  levied  tribute  for  her 
support,  and  led  his  armies  in  her  defence.  Whatever 
we  may  think  of  the  Church  of  Rome  at  the  present 
time,  it  is  impossible  not  to  recognise  in  her  pompous 
ritual  and  gorgeous  decoration,  means  admirably  adapt- 
ed to  secure  the  homage  of  the  untutored  minds  thus 
subjected  to  her  influence  ;  while  in  her  uncompromising 
assertion  of  despotic  authority  in  all  matters  of  belief, 
we  see  the  only  power,  humanly  speaking,  by  which, 
through  long  ages  of  darkness,  among  fierce  strifes  and 
ever-changing  political  organizations,  the  true  Christian 
faith,  from  which,  amid  all  her  perversions  in  practice, 
this  church  never  long  varied  in  principle,  could  have 
been  preserved. 

Christianity  having  once  taken  root  hi  the  earth,  and 
having,  nominally  at  least,  extended  its  empire  over 
those  nations  which  were  to  be  the  earth's  rulers,  the 


36  WOMAN  IN  AMEEICA  I 

great  object  for  which  Rome  had  been  permitted  to 
establish  so  wide  a  sovereignty  was  answered,  and  that 
sovereignty  was  broken  up  into  many  smaller  states,  in 
which  variety  of  laws  and  social  institutions  produced 
variety  of  character.  Still,  however,  over  these  states 
the  Church  maintained  her  spiritual  supremacy.  The 
fierce  spirits  of  their  barbarian  inhabitants  were  thus 
tamed  into  reverence,  and  those  who  might  have  defied 
the  Invisible  we're  subdued  into  lowly  submission  before 
the  visible  representative  of  His  power. 

But  the  Church,  becoming  more  and  more  corrupt  in 
practice,  less  and  less  true  to  the  faith  she  taught,  at 
length  betrayed  so  far  her  sacred  mission  as  to  make  a 
traffic  of  the  spiritual  mysteries  she  held,  that  she  might 
build  up  thereby  her  temporal  magnificence.  In  doing 
this  she  proved  that  these  mysteries,  for  the  teaching  of 
which  she  had  been  expressly  organized,  were  to  her  but 
cunningly  devised  fables.  The  glory  had  departed  from 
her,  and  had  not  the  sceptre  been  wrested  from  her 
hands,  the  shadow  of  a  universal  skepticism  would  soon 
have  fallen  on  our  race.  In  the  mean  time,  among  the 
forests  and  hills  of  Germany,  a  people  of  thoughtful 
mind  and  earnesi  faith  and  courageous  nature,  had  been 
preparing,  from  whom  first  arose  the  cry  for  the  bread 


HER  WORK  ANT)  HER  REWARD  3*7 

• 

of  life,  in  which  all  the  northern  nations  of  Europe  soon 
joined.  Macaulay,  with  that  masterly  vigor  which  ever 
marks  his  touch,  has  depicted  the  extent  of  the  Reforma- 
tion, and  the  political  causes  why  it  went  so  far  and  why 
it  failed  to  go  farther.  .  May  a  humbler  hand  be  per- 
mitted to  add  to  these  political  causes,  one  which  is  the 
result  of  faith  in  that 

— "  Divinity  which  shapes  our  ends, 
Rough-hew  them  how  we  will " 

These  northern  nations  were  not  of  higher  intelligence 
or  deeper  piety  than  those  who  dwelt  in  wanner  climes, 
but  the  stern  contest  with  the  unfriendly  elements  in 
which  then*  lives  were  passed,  and  the  character  of  their 
institutions,  had  given  energy  to  their  frames  and  inde- 
pendence to  their  spirits — had  accustomed  them  to  do 
their  own  thinking  and  their  own  fighting — had  matured 
them  into  men  who  might  now  be  trusted  to  defend  the 
faith  they  had  attained,  from  the  attacks  of  infidelity  on 
the  one  hand  and  of  superstition  on  the  other.  The 
more  southern  nations  of  Europe,  lulled  in  the  lap  of 
ease,  their  sky  all  sunshine  and  their  earth  all  flowers, 
had  become  indolent  and  luxurious,  and  indolence  and 
luxury  had  done  its  usual  work  upon  them,  enervating 


38  WOMAN  IN  AMEEICA I 

the  mind  as  well  as  the  body.  Of  little  value  to  them 
would  have  been  the  right  to  judge  for  themselves. 
Elegant  scholars,  charming  poets,  exquisite  artists  were 
they,  but  thinking — thinking  of  so  grave  and  stern  a 
character  as  those  subjects  require  which  are  involved  in 
our  religious  faith — this  was  a  labor  which  they  would 
have  preferred,  probably,  under  any  circumstances,  to 
relinquish  to  others ;  and  if  they  must  be  guided,  better 
for  them  the  Church  of  Rome,  even  with  all  the  faults 

,  her  worst  enemies  can  attribute  to  her,  than  the  reckless, 
mocking  spirit  of  infidelity.  To  such  minds,  "  to  exam- 
ine all  things  and  hold  fast  that  which  is  good,"  is  a 
well-nigh  impossible  achievement — they  believe  all  or 
reject  all.  Earnest  and  true  believers  were  many  of 
them  in  the  church  to  which  they  committed  themselves 
soul  and  body,  and  roused  by  her  peril,  they  cast  aside 
their  luxury,  forgot  their  sloth,  and  did  battle  for  her 
valiantly  with  both  sword  and  pen.  She  was  still  to 
them  the  representative  of  the  Holy,  and  they  could 
still  worship  through  her  "in  spirit  and  in  truth." 
Thus,  through  all  the  changes  of  the  Reformation  com- 
menced by  Luther,  do  we  still  see  the  Divine  Wisdom 

'  presiding  over  the  destinies  of  man — liberating  from  the 
thrall  of  superstition,  not  those  who  had  attained  to  the 


HEE  WORK  AND  .HER  REWARD.  39 

highest  civilization — who  possessed  the  most  acute  and 
subtle  intellects — but  those  nations,  and  those  only,  who, 
amidst  an  almost  rude  simplicity  of  life,  had  formed 
habits  of  earnest,  truthful,  and  courageous  thought,  and 
whose  strength,  rough  though  it  might  be,  permitted 
them  to  stand  alone,  to  preserve  their  mental  freedom 
without  suffering  it  to  degenerate  into  license. 

Isolated  from  the  reformed  nations  of  which  we  have 
spoken,  by  natural  position  and  political  institutions,  yet 
tracing  their  ancestry,  in  part  at  least,  to  the  same  source, 
speaking  a  kindred  language,  and  stamped  with  many  of 
the  same  characteristics,  mental  and  physical,  dwelt  a 
people  destined  to  exercise,  through  their  arts  and  their 
arms,  through  the  extent  of  their  commerce  and  their 
colonies,  an  influence  more  potent  than  ever  belonged 
to  any  other.  Rome  boasted  that  she  gave  laws  to 
one  world ;  England  has  planted  the  seed  of  her  free 
institutions  in  two — seed  which  has  sent  its  firm  roots 
deep  and  wide  into  the  heart  of  earth.  And  by  what 
wonderful  arrangements  of  an  all-governing  Power,  was 
this  people  moulded  for  their  work?  With  the  brave 
old  Briton,  whose  undisciplined  valor  left  the  Roman 
legions  little  to  boast  in  their  conquest,  must  unite  the 
thoughtful  spirit  of  the  German,  and  to  these  must  be 


40  WOMAN  IN  AMERICA: 

i  ^ 

added  the  fiery  soul  of  the  Norman,  himself  a  compound 
of  the  rude,  stern,  all-subduing  North,  with  the  quick, 
gay,  brilliant  influences  of  sunny  France,  ere  the  metal 
shall  be  rightly  tempered  from  which  that  mould  is  cast. 
The  result  has  been  a  people  whose  deep  thoughts  are 
the  parents  of  great  actions ;  who,  to  the  profound 
reasoning  of  the  German,  add  the  quick  action  of  the 
Frenchman ;  who  apply  every  idea  to  the  purposes  of 
practical  life,  and  who  therefore  used  the  arms  which 
had  freed  them  from  spiritual  despotism,  to  win  for 
themselves  political  liberty,  denying  the  divine  right  of 
the  king  over  their  bodies  and  estates,  as  well  as  of 
the  Pope  over  their  souls. 

From  this  nation  proceeded  the  American  people. 
We  are  the  offspring,  not  of  their  immature  youth,  not 
of  their  feeble  age,  but  of  the  strength  of  their  manhood, 
when  they  had  attained  their  fullest  development,  and 
when  that  development,  untouched  by  one  symptom  of 
decay,  still  gave  promise  of  immortality.  The  old 
Northman  seemed  to  have  roused  himself  from  the 
slumber  of  ages,  as  our  ancestors  turned  from  the  smil- 
ing shores  of  England  to  seek  new  homes  in  unknown 
lands  across  the  sea.  They  came  with  loftier  objects 
than  Northman  ever  knew,  and  animated  by  holier  hopes 


HER  WORK  AKD  HER  REWARD.  41 

» 

than  ever  beamed  upon  his  spirit.  Before  we  depict 
those  objects,  or  refer  to  those  hopes,  let  us  recall  the 
principles  already  asserted,  and  ask,  whether  the'  nation 
thus  carefully  prepared  and  providentially  brought 
hither,  had  no  peculiar  work  to  do  ?  Perhaps,  from 
the  circumstances  attending  their  formation  into  a  dis- 
tinct people,  and  the  peculiar  forms  thus  impressed  upon 
their  social  and  political  life,  this  work  may  be  deduced. 
We  will  seek  for  it  there ;  and  we  will  endeavor,  there- 
fore, in  the  next  chapter  rapidly  to  sketch  these  circum- 
stances and  forms. 

4* 


42  WOMAN  IN  AMERICA 


CHAPTER  IV, 

FEUDALISM    AND    ITS    CONSEQUENCES. 

IN  glancing  rapidly  over  the  governments  of  the  old 
world,  we  find  everywhere  one  principle  appearing  under 
forms  variously  modified  by  the  characteristics  of  the 
people  and  the  countries  over  which  they  have  been 
established.  This  principle  is  feudalism,  from  which  all 
these  governments  grew-  up.  Trace  them  back  to  their 
earliest  beginnings,  and  we  arrive  ever  at  some  military 
chieftain,  whose  right  was  the  product  of  his  might, 
gathering  about  him  his  more  peaceful  or  more  feeble 
neighbors,  and  purchasing  their  fealty  by  his  protection. 
The  diffusion  of  Christianity  and  the  establishment  of 
law  have,  in  many  countries,  broken  down  the  original 
forms  of  feudalism  and  crippled  its  gigantic  power,  yet  it 
still  lives. 

Fortified  castles  with  portcullis  and  drawbridge,  walls 
bristling  with  spears,  and  dungeons  to  which  the  light  of 
day  never  enters,  no  longer  frown  defiance  from  every 


HEE  WOEK  AND  HEE  EEWAED.  43 

cliff,  or  look  down  with  proud  superiority  on  the  humble 
hut  of  the  artisan  which  has  sought  safety  in  its  shadow, 
or  the  peaceful  abode  of  the  burgher,  who  must  lay  on 
its  threshold  a  large  portion  of  the  wealth  purchased  by 
many  toils  as  a  peace-offering  for  the  possession  of  the 
remainder.  But  the  descendants  of  those  who  held 
those  castles  still  claim  the  land  that  lay  around  them 
for  many  a  mile,  thus  concentrating  in  the  hands  of  a 
few  the  fair  earth  which  God  created  for  all ;  while  on 
this  far- extended  surface  hundreds,  made  of  the  same 
clay  and  deriving  their  life  from  the  same  divine  source, 
labor  unceasingly  from  dawn  to  dark  to  supply  luxuries 
to  the  owner  of  the  soil,  and  to  themselves  and  their 
families  the  merest  necessaries  of  an  existence  little  ele- 
vated above  that  of  the  brute.  Even  in  Christian 
England — England,  which  we  honor  for  its  noble  institu- 
tions, and  love  as  the  land  in  which  our  fathers  first 
drew  breath,  as  the  land  which  has  given  us  laws  and 
language,  and  from  whose  literature  our  spiritual  life  has 
been  drawn — even  in  England  this  deadly  Upas  has  dif- 
fused its  baleful  influence  ;  feudalism  is  still  the  vital 
principle  of  many  of  her  institutions,  and  reappears  per- 
petually in  her  life,  political  and  social.  We  see  this 
with  pain,  and  admit  it  with  reluctance,  for  the  spirit  of 


44  WOMAN  IN  AMEKICA  : 

feudalism  is  so  opposed  to  the  spirit  of  Christianity,  that 
we  cannot  resist  the  conviction  that  as  the  latter  tri- 
umphs, the  former,  and  all  to  which  it  gives  life,  must 
be  destroyed.  Let  us  hope  that  in  England  this  will  be 
but  as  the  wood  and  hay  and  stubble  which  may  be 
burned,  and  leave  the  gold  and  silver  and  precious  stones 
unharmed. 

"  No  principle  has  long  held  influence  over  the  popu- 
lar mind  which  did  not  embody  some  truth,"  says  a  dis-. 
tinguished  writer,  and  feudalism  offers  no  exception  to 
the  rule.  Honor  to  the  brave  hearts  and  the  strong 
hands,  which,  "  when  there  was  no  law  were  a  law  unto 
themselves,"  and  won  lands,  and  lordships,  and  fair  re- 
nown, by  aiding  the  weak,  defending  the  innocent,  and 
punishing  the  oppressor.  There  was  truth  in  them,  and 
well  might  the  feeble  seek  to  dwell  within  their  shadow, 
and  the  industrious  artizan  and  tradesman  give  some- 
thing of  their  gains  to  those  who,  to  secure  to  them  the 
quiet  possession  of  the  remainder — 

"  Slept  with  heads  upon  the  sword 
Their  fevered  hands  must  grasp  in  waking." 

But  with  the  sovereignty  of  law  this  aspect  of  feudal- 
ism has  passed  away.  The  artisan  and  tradesman  no 
longer  need  a  defender — the  law  spreads  her  aegis  over 


HER  WORK  AND  HER  REWARD.    •  45 

them,  and  secures  to  them  the  possession  of  their  gains, 
— the  produce  of  their  toil.  The  same  law,  with  im- 
partial hand,  protects  the  earl  or  duke  in  the  lands  and 
lordship  which  his  father  won.  Well  for  this  earl  or 
duke  it  may  be,  that  the  price  by  which  they  were 
held, — the  protection  of  the  weak  and  the  defence  of 
the  land  in  which  he  dwells, — are  no  longer  claimed,  for 
alas !  strong  hands  and  brave  hearts  are  not  always, 
like  lands  and  lordships,  transmissible  by  descent. 

We  would  not  be  understood  to  assert  that  there  are 
not  those  who  use  the  power  and  property  which  they 
owe  to  the  old  feudalism  for  good — who  obey  the  Chris- 
tian law  of  benevolence,  so  far  as  they  can  without  re- 
linquishing the  rights  of  their  birth  and  station  and  thus 
breaking  up  the  very  foundations  of  the  society  in  which 
they  dwell,  and  whose  peace  and  welfare  they  are  bound 
to  seek.  Such,  could  this  page  meet  their  eye,  would 
probably  be  the  first  to  feel  and  to  acknowledge  with 
us,  that  feudalism  and  the  wide  and  permanent  dis- 
tinctions in  society  which  have  grown  out  of  it,  are  so 

far  inconsistent  with  the  spirit  of  that  gospel  which  pro- 

mL, 
claims  everywhere,  "  Love  your  neighbor  as  yourself" — 

"All  ye  are  brethren"— that  it  renders  obedience  to  its 
laws  more  difficult.  Distinctions  there  will  be  indeed, 


46    '  WOMAN  IN  AMEEICA  I 

while  one  has  ten  talents,  another  five,  and  another  only 
one  committed  to  him.  While  the  laws  established  by 
God  remain  unchanged,  the  idle  and  dissolute  father 
must  leave  his  offspring  to  reap  the  bitter  fruits  of  his 
acts  in  poverty  and  disgrace,  and  the  industry,  temper- 
ance, and  integrity,  of  our  progenitors,  secure  for  us  a 
vantage-ground  in  the  race  of  life.  But  these  distinc- 
tions are  open  to  all — they  stimulate  therefore  the  efforts 
of  all — they  say  not  to  any,  "  Stand  aside,  you  may  not 
enter  here  as  a  competitor."  Widely  differing  from  these 
are  the  distinctions  which  feudalism  has  bequeathed  to 
every  nation  in  which  it  has  existed.  There  the  distinc- 
tions are  not  of  the  various  grades  of  talent,  but  of  the 
common  clay  and  the  fine  porcelain,  the  folly  of  the  last 
being  more  excellent  than  the  wisdom  of  the  first. 
There  we  have  classes  privileged  to  live  on  the  labor  of 
others,  to  eat  their  bread  in  the  sweat  not  of  their  .own, 
but  of  their  neighbors'  brows, — escaping  the  sentence 
pronounced  in  Eden,  by  laying  on  their  fellows  their 
share  of  the  burden  which  it  was  designed  that  all  should 
bear.  The  hut  there  must  be  poorer  that  the  palace 
may  be  richer.  Again  we  say,  that  all  this  is  diametrically 
opposed  to  the  spirit  of  .Christianity,  which  teaches  the 
brotherhood  of  all  men. 


HER  WORK  AND  HER  REWARD.      47 

But  while  we  thus  see  the  wrongs  which  have  be- 
come inextricably  intertwined  with  all  institutions  based 
upon  feudalism,  let  it  not  be  thought  that  we  are  of 
those  who  could  ruthlessly  sweep  those  institutions  from 
the  earth.  They  are  as  structures  venerable  for  age,  and 
associated  with  all  which  we  regard  as  most  hallowed  in 
the  past.  In  these  associations,  and  hi  their  picturesque 
beauty,  they  possess  a  charm  for  the  heart  and  the  ima- 
gination which  cannot  be  effaced  by  their  utter  unsuit- 
ableness  to  the  present  aspects  of  life.  We  shall  mourn 
their  downfall,  come  when  it  will.  We  cannot  spare 
even  one  leaf  of  the  ivy  which  is  destroying  while  it 
decorates  them.  Yet  "  we  rejoice  with  joy  unspeakable'.' 
that  the  great  Ruler  of  the  earth  has  permitted  other 
structures  to  be  erected  free  from  these  dangerous  deco- 
rations— other  institutions  to  arise  from  which  these 
wrongs  have  been  excluded.  Such  we  conceive  to  be 
the  government  of  the  United  States  of  North  America, 
whose  earliest  settlement  was  a  protest  against  feudalism, 
with  all  its  train  of  abuses  in  church  and  state.  We  are 
thus  brought  to  the  object  of  the  present  chapter,  viz : 
a  sketch  of  the  circumstances  under  which  these  states 
were  settled,  and  of  the  peculiar  forms  impressed  on 
their  government. 


48  WOMAN  IN  AMERICA  I 

In  saying  that  the  earliest  settlement  in  the  United 
States  was  a  protest  against  feudalism  and  its  attendant 
abuses,  we  did  not  mean  to  deny  that  attempts  had  been 
made  to  settle  here  from  other  and  less  noble  motives. 
The  haughtiest  and  most  despotic  of  the  Tudors  yet 
reigned  over  a  submissive  people,  when  the  first  unfortu- 
nate colony  was  planted  on  the  Roanoke  by  the  chival- 
rous Raleigh ;  and  the  absurdities  and  petty  tyranny  of 
the  first  and  meanest  of  the  Stuarts  had  not  yet  roused 
the  English  mind  to  resistance  against  hereditary  power, 
when  the  little  band  into  which  the  spirit  of  the  adven- 
turous Smith  alone  infused  endurance,  landed  in  Vir- 
ginia, and  marked  their  homage  to  their  liege  lord,  by 
giving  to  the  noble  river  up  which'  they  sailed,  and  to 
the  town  which  they  planted  on  its  banks,  the  name  of 
James.  But  the  first  of  these  colonies  vanished  from 
the  earth,  leaving  no  trace  behind  them,  almost  as  soon 
as  they  were  left  by  their  commander,  and  the  last  ling- 
ered on  in  a  state  which  daily  threatened  extinction,  till 
the  stern  necessities  of  their  position,  and  the  ignorance 
and  narrow  policy  of  their  patrons  abroad,  had  forced 
them  into  a  freer  and  more  self-relying  life.  From 
mutual  hardships  and  mutual  aid  sprang  the  spirit  of 
true  brotherhood  and  equality,  and  the  government, 


HER  WORK  AND  HER  REWARD.  49 

throwing  off  its  aristocratic  and  feudal  forms,  became  free 
and  popular,  and  in  its  freedom  found  strength, — then, 
and  not  till  then,  firmly  rooting  itself  in  the  American 
soil.  The  next  who  sought  our  shores  were  the  Puri- 
tans, who,  driven  by  persecution  from  their  homes  in 
England,  found  a  refuge  first  in  Holland,  and  then  on 
the  bleak  and  rock-bound  shores  of  New  England.  The 
despotic  authority  of  the  king  or  feudal  lord,  and  of  the 
bishop  appointed  by  him,  they  denied  in  the  very  act  of 
coming  hither,  and  though  they  long  continued  to  cling 
to  England  as  their  own  and  their  fathers'  home,  it  is 
impossible  to  read  their  simple  narration  of  their  voyage 
and  their  landing,  of  their  early  attempts  at  govern- 
ment, and  the  manner  in  which  the  various  difficulties 
they  encountered  were  met,  without  recognising  in  that 
small  community  the  germ  of  the  present  republic  of 
these  United  States.  They  then  emphatically  declared 
by  their  actions,  what  more  than  one  hundred  and  fifty 
years  after  their  descendants  expressed  in  words : — 
"We  are,  and  of  right  ought  to  be,  free  and  indepen- 
dent." It  is  true  they  imperfectly  understood  the  ex- 
tent of  those  principles  on  which  they  acted,  as  they 
proved  by  not  allowing  to  others  the  same  freedom 
which  they  claimed  for  themselves.  They  were  still 
5 


50  WOMAN  IN  AMERICA: 

but  on  the  threshold  of  the  temple  of  liberty  which 
they  were  one  day  to  enter,  and  the  gates  of  which, 
having  once  entered,  they  would  throw  open  to  the 
world.  From  them  went  forth  Roger  Williams,  the 
Baptist.  The  sect  to  which  he  belonged  bears  at  this 
day  the  stigma  of  being  the  most  narrow  and  bigotted 
among  those  who  call  themselves  by  the  Christian  name, 
yet  they  were  in  truth  the  first  to  set  the  world  the 
example  of  perfect  religious  toleration.  In  the  laws 
framed  for  that  society  which  planted  itself  on  Narra- 
ganset  Bay,  in  what  is  now  the  little  state  of  Rhode 
Island,  Jew  and  Pagan,  Mahomedan  and  Christian, 
might  each  worship  the  Universal  Father  in  the  mode 
dictated  by  his  own  conscience,  while  this  mode  did  not 
interfere  with  the  rights  of  others.  The  same  large 
spirit  of  toleration  appeared  in  the  Roman  Catholic  Lord 
Baltimore,  who,  in  the  constitution  prepared  for  the  col- 
onists of  Maryland,  placed  worshippers  of  every  Chris- 
tian faith  on  perfect  political  equality.  Pennsylvania 
and  South  Carolina  were,  like  Massachusetts,  settled,  at 
least  in  part,  by  those  who  were  seeking  a  refuge  from 
religious  and  political  oppression.  Little  attachment  to 
the  arbitrary  institutions  under  whose  sway  they  had 
suffered,  could  be  supposed  to  live  in  the  hearts  of  the 


HER  WORK  AND  HER  REWARD.  51 

Quakers  of  England  or  the  Huguenots  of  France.  The 
first  inhabitants  of  New  York  were  Hollanders — a  peo- 
ple more  republican  two  hundred  years  ago,  than  now — 
and  when  it  passed  under  the  dominion  of  England,  little 
change  was  made  in  its  government.  Georgia  alone,  of 
all  the  Atlantic  states,  was  settled  under  the  immediate 
auspices  of  royalty,  and  there,  as  in  Virginia,  it  was  not 
till  the  colony  had  ceased  to  look  abroad  for  support,  till 
it  had  become  self-relying,  and  had  so  modified  its  origi- 
nal institutions  as  to  give  equal  rights  to  all,  that  it  be- 
gan to  prosper.  Thus,  by  seemingly  fortuitous  circum- 
stances, in  which  the  devout  mind  recognises  an  over- 
ruling Providence,  in  some  cases  without,  and,  in  some 
cases  even  against  the  design  of  the  colonists  themselves, 
the  settlements  made  in  that  part  of  North  America 
called  the  United  States,  were  moulded  into  forms  calcu- 
lated to  foster  the  spirit  of  equality,  of  brotherhood, — 
while  each  generation,  as  it  passed,  has  done  its  part  to- 
wards sweeping  away  the  faint  traces  of  the  old  feudal- 
ism which  lingered  amongst  us.  See  here,  then,  the 
wide  difference  between  our  civilization  and  that  of  every 
other  Christian  nation — feudalism  lying  at  the  root  of  all 
then*  institutions,  and  intertwining  itself  with  their  very 
life. 


52  WOMAN  IN  AMEUICA: 

We  will  not  deny  that  we  have  lost  some  desirable 
things  in  our  progress.  Our  life  is  not  and  cannot  be  so 
picturesque  as  that  on  which  the  old  feudal  times  have 
impressed  their  imposing  forms.  No  palaces,  with  their 
broad  parks,  their  waving  banners,  and  battlemented 
towers — no  old  cathedral,  with  its  fretted  roofs  and 
"  long-drawn  aisles,"  the  work  of  many  generations,  may 
rear  their  stately  heads  upon  our  hill  sides,  or  in  our 
flowery  vales.  No  monarch,  with  diadem  and  sceptre — 
no  nobles,  with  gorgeous  robes,  and  all  the  glittering 
insignia  of  rank,  dignify  and  adorn  our  social  life — no 
prelate  with  flowing  vestments,  uniting  in  his  person 
sanctions  human  and  Divine — the  power  of  the  church 
and  of  the  state — claims  our  homage.  We  have  thus 
lost,  with  much  that  charms  the  eye,  the  highest  visible 
representatives  of  earthly  majesty  and  of  spiritual  su- 
premacy. And  in  losing  these,  we  incur  the  hazard 
of  a  much  more  serious  loss.  Some  of  the  noblest 
properties  of  our  nature  have  been  exercised  by  the 
very  inequalities  we  have  condemned  and  discarded. 
Such  are  the  loyalty  which  clings  with  unshaken  de- 
termination to  the  object  of  its  faith,  amid  disaster,  and 
even  in  ruin — and  the  reverence  which  does  homage 
to  nobleness  of  spirit  and  purity  of  soul  in  their  visible 


HER  WORK  AND  HER  REWARD.  53 

types.  It  is  true  that  these  qualities,  in  their  highest 
development,  demand  no  visible  representative  of  the 
sublime  ideals  to  which  they  attach  themselves — that 
reverence  bows  with  a  purer  and  more  self-abasing  pros- 
tration before  the  majesty  of  virtue  and  the  beauty  of 
holiness,  than  before  the  mitred  head  and  spotless  lawn 
— and  that  loyalty  is  more  intact  when  exercised  in 
the  defence  of  an  unchanging  principle,  than  of  'any 
human,  and  therefore  fallible,  embodiment  of  that  prin- 
ciple. But  it  is  also  true,  that,  while  the  earthly,  with 
its  loud  trumpet-calls  and  imposing  shows,  commands 
the  attention  of  all,  comparatively  few  are  capable  of 
that  vigorous  effort  necessary  to  keep  the  mind  awake 
to  the  claims  of  the  unseen  and  spiritual,  with  its  "  still, 
small  voice ;"  and  thus  the  loyalty  and  the  reverence 
yielded  to  nothing  else,  may  become  forgotten  things. 

Lest  we  should  seem  by  these  admissions  to  give  too 
great  a  triumph  to  the  opponents  of  our  institutions,  let 
us  add,  that  if  we  have  no  splendid  palaces,  we  have  no 
huts  green  with  damp  and  mouldering  with  decay ;  if 
we  have  no  cathedrals  which  wake  the  world's  wonder 
by  their  vastness  and  the  elaborate  style  of  then-  archi- 
tecture, we  have  few,  if  any,  villages  in  our  land  where 
at  least  one  slender  spire  does  not  attract  the  eye  and 
5* 


54  WOMAN  iisr  AMEKICA: 

the  thoughts  Heavenward.  Let  it  be  understood  also, 
that  we  do  not  admit  a  necessity  for  the  sacrifice,  under 
our  equalizing  institutions,  of  any  quality  essential  to  the 
perfection  of  our  nature.  There  is  danger,  as  we  have 
said,  of  such  sacrifices ;  but  the  danger  may  be  averted — 
by  what  means  we  will  endeavor  to  show  hereafter. 


HER  WORK  AND  HER  REWARD.      55 


CHAPTER  V. 

SOCIAL    LIFE    IN   THE    UNITED    STATES. 

FROM  the  forests  of  Germany,  from  the  foamir  »  seas 
of  the  North  ;  through  sunny  France  and  Engla;  .d,  no- 
ble England,  our  Fatherland,  we  have  been  led  hither 
and  have  been  built  up  into  a  nation ;  the  first  in  the 
world's  history  which  has  been  reared  on  ground  unen- 
cumbered by  old  superstititions,  and  which  has  had  for 
its  corner-stone  a  perfect  civil  and  religious  liberty. 
Hither  have  we  been  led,  and  here  have  we  been  built  up ; 
for  not  by  our  own  might  or  power,  but  by  that  of  the  • 
living  God  was  the  work  accomplished.  Vain  indeed 
would  boasting  be  in  us,  for,  like  the  Israelites  of  old, 
"  we  were  led  by  a  way  we  knew  not  of."  It  was  under 
the  influence  of  English  life  that  our  fathers  grew  into 
the  stature  of  perfect  men.  They  were  Englishmen 
when  refusing  to  submit  their  consciences  to  the  dicta- 
tion of  any  human  power,  they  came  here  to  establish  as 
Americans  that  perfect  liberty  which  as  Englishmen  they 


56  WOMAN  ESr  AMERICA .' 

had  conceived  and  loved,  but  which  they  knew  it  would 
be  impossible  to  enjoy  in  a  country  into  whose  soil  feu- 
dalism had  struck  its  roots  so  deeply,  that  it  must  be  the 
work  of  many  years,  perhaps  of  centuries,  to  extirpate 
them  without  danger  to  the  noble  edifices  erected  upon 
them.  To  us,  their  children,  it  belonged  to  complete 
what  they  had  commenced,  to  fill  up  the  fair  outline 
which  they  had  sketched,  and  to  show  the  world  the 
beauty  of  that  Christian  freedom  with  whose  ideal  they 
had  become  enamored,  and  in  pursuit  of  which  they  had 
adventured  and  endured  so  much. 

And  how  have  we  fulfilled  this  duty  ?  In  our  politi- 
cal life,  nobly.  He  who  giveth  wisdom  hath  made  our 
counsellors  wise  ;  for  our  national  acts  have  been,  with 
few  exceptions,  marked  by  that  sturdy  common  sense 
derived  from  our  parent  stock,  and  by  that  devotion  to 
liberty  to  which  we  owe  our  existence  as  a  distinct 
people. 

But  while  such  has  been  the  aspect  of  our  political 
life,  far  different  has  been  that  of  our  social  life.  As  a 
nation  independent,  self-relying,  and  moving  onward  with 
a  calmness  marking  just  confidence  in  our  powers,  and  a 
hearty  conviction  of  the  truth  of  our  principles  ;  in  social 
life  we  have  been  servile  imitators,  the  apes  of  every 


HER  WORK  AND  HER  REWARD.      57 

folly,  and  apologists  of  every  vice  to  which  European 
custom  has  given  a  sanction. 

And  whence  springs  this  great  difference  ?  Is  it  not 
that — while  American  statesmen,  those  who  preside  over 
our  national  acts,  have  understood  then-  position,  and, 
having  a  definite  aim,  have  advanced  to  its  accomplish- 
ment with  assured  steps — American  women,  those  who 
preside  over  social  life,  "have  understood  neither  their 
present  position  nor  the  future  to  which  they  are  tend- 
ing, and  therefore  have  moved  on  without  any  definite 
aim,  "  wandering  clouds,  carried  hither  and  thither  by 
every  wind"  of  fashion? 

And  must  it  be  thus  ?  Is  there  not  for  us  too  a  work 
to  do,  a  destiny  to  accomplish  ?  May  not  we,  the 
women  of  America,  mould  our  social  life  by  our  intelli- 
gent convictions  into  a  form  which  shall  make  it  the  fit 
handmaid  of  our  political  life  in  its  grand  simplicity  and 
lofty  amis  ?  If  we  would  accomplish  this,  one  thing  is 
evident — so  evident  that  it  can  scarcely  require  either 
argument  or  persuasion  to  commend  it  to  the  acceptance 
of  every  intelligent  mind — it  is,  that  we  are  to  look  else- 
where than  to  Europe*  for  the  model  after  which  we  are 
to  work.  The  social  life  we  find  there  may  be  imposing 
in  its  grandeur,  beautiful  in  its  refinements,  and  gorgeous 


58  WOMAN  IN  AMEEICA  I 

in  its  adornments  to  the  eye  of  him  who  looks  only  on  its 
surface,  but  it  cannot  be  made  to  harmonize  with  the 
principles  on  which  our  political  life,  our  very  existence 
as  an  independent  nation,  is  founded. 

This  is,  we  repeat,  a  fact  so  obvious,  that  it  cannot  fail 
to  be  accepted  as  truth  by  every  intelligent  mind.  But 
something  more  than  the  mind's  acceptance  is  necessary 
to  give  to  any  truth  that  living  power  which  makes  it 
grow  and  bring  forth  fruit ;  it  must  be  received  into  the 
heart,  and  against  this  truth,  we  fear,  our  hearts  are  still 
closed.  We  are  endeavoring  to  reconcile  the  irreconci- 
lable ;  and  offer  to  the  world,  at  present,  the  appearance 
of  architects  who,  having  commenced  a  grand  and  noble 
edifice  in  the  simple  Doric  style,  are  striving  to  in- 
graft upon  their  original  plan  the  graceful  decorations  of 
the  Corinthian.  Each  style  has  a  beauty  of  its  own,  but 
the  two  united  would  produce  only  a  grotesque  absurd- 
ity. Yet  more  striking  would  the  absurdity  be,  if,  as  in 
our  own  case,  the  resources  of  the  architects  were  too 
restricted  to  permit  them  to  give  the  decorations  at  which 
they  aimed  in  all  their  richness  and  elegance,  obliging 
them  to  content  themselves  with  such  a  poor  seeming  as 
could  satisfy  only  the  most  superficial  and  most  inartistic 
observer.  Such  must  be  our  imitation  of  the  social  life 


HEE  WOEK  AXD  HEE  EEWAED.  59 

of  those  countries  in  which  the  whole  landed  property 
was  originally  distributed  amongst  a  few  leaders,  and 
where  the  law  of  entail  has  confined  the  succession  to 
this  property,  with  almost  all  the  wealth  accumulated 
from  it  by  centuries  of  careful  cultivation,  to  nearly  the 
original  number. 

What  is  it  amongst  us  which  excites  that  ridicule 
from  foreigners,  under  which  we  have  so  often  winced  ? 
Is  it  the  simplicity  of  our  political  organization,  the 
plainness  of  our  citizen-president,  the  unostentatious 
home  provided  for  his  abode,  and  the  unceremonious  re- 
ception which,  as  the  representative  of  a  republican  peo- 
ple, he  gives  to  the  representatives  of  other  lands  ?  Is 
it  the  academies  and  colleges,  so  much  less  liberally  en- 
dowed than  their  own,  and  wanting  all  that  prestige,  the 
richest  legacy  of  the  past,  with  which  time  has  hallowed 
the  halls  of  Oxford  and  of  Cambridge  ?  Is  it  the  com- 
paratively small  extent  of  our  cities,  or  their  want  of 
splendid  architectural  adornments?  No,  in  some  of 
these  things,  if  indeed  they  are  persons  possessing  the 
faculty  of  vision,  they  see  that  beautiful  consistency  of 
practice  and  principle  which  all  men  honor ;  and  in  oth- 
ers they  are  ready  to  acknowledge  that  the  wonder  is 
not  that  so  little,  but  that  so  much  has  been  done ;  not 


60  WOMAN  IN  AMEKICA  : 

that  the  result  of  two  hundred  years'  labor  here  has  not 
equalled  that  of  two  thousand  years  abroad,  but  that  it 
has  made  so  near  an  approximation  to  it.  But  when 
they  turn  to  our  social  life,  to  its  feverish  ambition,  its 
mean  jealousies,  its  ostentatious  displays,  its  fretful  sen- 
sitiveness, its  strange  contrasts,  its  want  of  all  harmony 
and  beauty,  of  all  repose  and  dignity,  their  respect  for 
us  vanishes,  and  the  kindliest  feeling  which  can  succeed, 
is  compassion  for  our  vain  struggles  after  the  unattain- 
able. 

Let  it  not  be  thought  that  we  would  so  belie  our 
country  as  to  insinuate  that  this  is  all  which  our  social 
life  presents ;  but  this  is  what  lies  on  the  surface,  this, 
ever  eager  for  exhibition,  starts  forward  and  is  first  seen 
by  foreigners — first  and  often  only  seen.  Often  this 
class  presents  all  of  society  into  which  foreigners  enter ; 
and  this,  with  uneducated  laborers  and  the  heterogene- 
ous mixture  of  enterprising  industry  and  despairing  in- 
dolence, of  vice  and  misery,  yearly  received  from  Eu- 
rope, makes  up  the  sum  of  what  they  denominate 
American  society.  Into  the  true  American  life,  the  life 
in  which  labor  and  refinement  walk  hand  in  hand,  in 
which,  with  a  thorough  understanding  of  themselves  and 
their  position,  a  class,  intelligent,  educated,  and  often 


HER  WORK  AND  HER  REWARD.      61 

even  highly  accomplished,  having  set  before  them  an 
ideal  nobler  than  any  yet  attained  on  earth,  are  working 
out  that  ideal  in  the  quietness  of  spirits  dwelling  in  too 
high  a  region  to  be  disturbed  by  the  capricious  winds 
and  currents  of  fashion ;  into  this  life  they  have  never 
entered,  they  know  nothing  of  its  existence,  and  if  some 
one  from  it  crosses  their  path,  he  is  but  an  individual, 
an  exception  to  general  rules,  his  excellencies  belong  to 
him  as  man — the  shades,  by  which  in  the  best  those  ex- 
cellencies will  be  darkened,  are  American. 

Let  us  not  complain  of  this  as  unjust.  These  "  sec- 
ond Daniels"  are  but  men,  and  judge,  as  we  would  do, 
by  what  they  see  and  hear,  forgetting  that  not  in  the 
thunder  and  the  tempest,  but  in  the  still,  small  voice, 
dwells  the  spirit  and  the  power.  For  them  and  for  the 
world,  at  least  the  world  among  ourselves,  to  whom  it  is 
of  most  importance,  let  us  endeavor  to  lift  the  veil  from 
this  true  American  life.  Happy  shall  we  be  if  we  can 
so  reveal  its  beauty  that  those  who  look  shall  love  and 
strive  to  make  it  theirs. 

6 


62  WOMAN  IN  AMERICA  : 


CHAPTER  VI, 

SOCIAL    EVILS WOMAN    THEIR    REFORMER. 

IT  has  been  often  repeated,  so  often  that  many  have 
grown  weary  of  the  repetition,  that  one  of  the  first  prin- 
ciples of  our  government  is  equality  ;  and  yet  it  may  be 
doubted  whether  some  among  us  would  not  find  it  diffi- 
cult to  define  what  this  equality  means,  or  in  what  it 
consists.  Not,  surely,  in  personal  qualities  ;  for  none  can 
be  so  besotted  as  to  imagine,  that  by  simply  being 
Americans,  they  may  claim  equality  with  all  of  the  same 
nation  in  the  dignities  conferred  by  high  moral  or  in- 
tellectual power.  Nor  does  it  consist  in  an  equal  parti- 
cipation in  all  the  advantages  which  wealth  and  social 
position  confer ;  for  should  any  one  claim  this  and  at- 
tempt to  enforce  his  claim,  the  bolts  of  a  prison  or  a 
madhouse  would  soon  teach  him  that  the  opinion  of  the 
world  was  adverse  to  his  own. 

And  yet  it  is  not  a  vain  boast,  that  we  did  first,  as  a 
people,  assert,  and  have  striven  to  maintain,  that  all  men 


HER  WORK  AND  HER  REWARD.  63 

were  born  free  and  equal, — with  equal  right  to  enjoy  and 
to  improve  to  the  utmost,  that  heritage  derived,  under 
Providence,  from  their  progenitors. 

Was  thy  father  a  builder  of  other  men's  houses — a 
shoemaker,  working  at  his  last — or  a  blacksmith,  wield- 
ing the  hammer  with  sturdy  arm — and  did  he,  by  his 
honest  industry,  win  for  thee,  his  loved  one,  a  higher, 
and  in  the  world's  judgment,  a  better  fortune  ?  Let 
him  smile  as  he  looks  at  thy  boyish  sports,  and  say  to 
himself — "  Thy  life  shall  be  of  a  nobler  sort  than  mine." 
It  shall  be  thine  own  fault  if  this  saying  prove  not  pro- 
phetic. There  is  no  seminary  of  learning  in  the  land  into 
which  his  gold  may  not  buy  thee  admittance,  and  there 
thou  shalt  stand  on  such  eminence  as  thy  merits  shall 
command.  From  such  seminary  thou  mayst  pass  into 
the  profession  that  best  pleases  thee;  all  are  open  to 
thee,  and  that  prophetic  father  may  live  to  see  thee  a 
judge  on  the  bench  of  the  Supreme  Court,  a  senator  in 
the  halls  of  Congress,  or  a  President  of  the  United 
States.  No  privileged  class  shall  say  to  thee — "  Touch 
not  that  honor — set  not  thy  foot  upon  that  eminence  ;  it 
belongs  to  us."  Thou  art  free ;  free  to  develop  thyself 
as  thy  will  shall  prompt,  and  thy  powers  permit.  This 
world  is  God's  world,  and  He  hath  given  thee  so  much 


64  WOMAN  EST  AMERICA  : 

of  it  as.  thou,  with  thy  best  faculties,  canst  conquer. 
Such  is  the  language  of  our  Constitution,  to  which 
nothing  in  our  political  life  gives  denial.  There  the 
cloth  of  frieze  stands  unrepulsed  beside  the  cloth  of 
gold,  and  may  even  attain  to  a  higher  position ;  but  not 
thus  is  it  with  our  social  life.  There,  the  intellect  may 
glow  with  man's  noblest  powers,  the  heart  throb  with 
his  highest  aspirations,  and  the  manners  may  reflect,  in 
their  gentleness  and  refinement,  the  glory  of  such  powers 
and  such  aspirations ;  yet,  if  all  this  be  covered  by  the 
cloth  of  frieze,  away  Avith  it — it  may  not  enter  the 
charmed  circle  of  "good  society,"  or  enter  only  after  its 
own  degradation,  as  Samson,  shorn  of  his  locks,  was 
brought  before  the  lords  of  the  Philistines  to  make 
sport  for  them. 

And  what  constitutes  this  soi  disant  good  society  ? 
"Wealth,  and  the  senseless  fripperies  which  wealth  may 
purchase.  Oh  !  give  us  back  the  old  reverence  for  a 
noble  name.  If  we  must  have  a  privileged  class — if  we 
must  bear  "  the  contumely  which  patient  merit  of  the 
unworthy  takes,"  restore  to  us  the  illusion  by  which  we 
might  fancy  ourselves  doing  homage  to  the  kingly  spirits 
of  earth  in  the  persons  of  their  degenerate  descendants. 
In  such  homage  there  may  be  something  ennobling ;  but 


HEE  WOEK  AND  TTTra.  EEWAED.  65 


in  this  worship  of  Mammon,  this  bending  the,  spirit  to 
vulgarity  and  frivolity,  because  decorated  with  jewels 
and  brocade,  there  is  every  thing  debasing.  And  to 
what  do  we  owe  the  strength  of  this  sentiment  of  vene- 
ration for  wealth  amongst  us  ?  Is  it  not  to  our  having 
placed  before  us  the  social  life  of  Europe  as  our  model  ? 
Wetannot  command  domains  associated  with  ancestral 
names  whose  very  sound  is  a  spell,  stirring  the  heart 
like  a  trumpet-tone,  and  evoking  images  of  past  splendor 
which  throw  a  halo  over  ruin  and  decay  ;  but  wealth 
will  enable  us  to  build  houses  almost  as  large  as  those 
to  which  these  domains  are  attached,  and  a  great  deal 
finer.  Base  and  shaft  to  our  Corinthian  column  may  be 
wanting  ;  but  we  will  place  the  rich  capital  upon  our 
Doric  base,  and  by  covering  its  decorations  with  gold- 
leaf,  make  it  much  more  showy. 

If  we  would  cease  to  be  the  world's  derision  —  if  we 
would  take  the  position  which  God  designed  us  to  take 
among  the  nations  of  the  earth,  we  must  put  from  us 
this  low  ambition,  we  must  understand  our  noble  work, 
and  elevate  our  aims  to  its  accomplishment. 

Feudalism  had  its  mission  —  a  mission  to  educate  men 

\ 
into  reverence  and  obedience.     The  rude,  semi-barbarous 

nations  of  Europe  in  the  middle  ages  could  not  have  ap- 
6* 


66  WOMAN  IN  AMEEICA  I 

preciated  the  majesty  of  law,  and  would  neither  have 
reverenced  nor  obeyed  a  power  so  spiritual.  These 
emotions,  then,  must  be  excited  in  their  minds  by  that 
physical  force,  and  those  outward  -demonstrations  of 
superiority,  which  strike  the  senses.  The  diadem, 
sparkling  with  gems,  the  purple  robe,  the  golden  scep- 
tre, all  the  insignia  of  royal  or  of  noble  rank,  all*  the 
rigid  etiquette  which  marked  the  gradations  of  society, 
and  kept  each  class  hedged  in  as  by  an  insuperable 
barrier,  which  was  soon  made  to  appear  a  divine  and 
indefeasible  right — these  were  all  but  means  towards  the 
accomplishment  of  this  end.  That  they  were  wisely- 
appointed  and  successful  means,  we  may  learn  by  a 
glance  at  the  history  of  the  civilized  world.  Let  us  take 
England,  the  most  advanced  in  Christian  civilization  of 
all  those  nations  whose  barbarous  or  semi-barbarous 
origin  required  these  educational  processes.  While  at 
every  advancing  step  she  has  made,  some  form  has  been 
discarded,  or  has,  at  least,  ceased  to  awaken  the  public 
reverence,  has  not  the  inner  spirit  which  that  form  had 
represented,  the  law,  been  more  clearly  revealed — win- 
ning, in  its  majestic  simplicity,  a  truer  and  more  enduring 
homage  than  had  been  yielded  to  its  imposing  represen- 
tative ?  There  was  a  period  in  her  history — the  memo- 


HER  WORK  AND  HER  REWARD.      67 

rable  period  of  the  Stuart  dynasty — when  the  forms  and 
the  spirit,  royalty  and  the  law  whose  power  it  had  been 
created  to  represent  and  to  enforce,  were  arrayed  against 
each  other,  and  the  result  proved  that  forms  were  fast 
becoming  useless  to  a  nation  which  had  learned  well  its 
lesson  of  reverence  to  the  spirit  of  law. 

Yet,  though  their  work  was  well  nigh  done,  their  use 
had  well  nigh  passed  away,  these  forms  must  be  recon- 
ciled to  the  spirit  of  law,  not  discarded,  for  they  were 
but  branches  of  that  feudalism  from  which  the  whole 
social  structure  had  grown  up.  They  must  not  be  torn 
away,  lest  that  structure  should  be  shaken  to  the  base ; 
they  must  be  left  to  the  action  of  time.  Slowly,  but 
surely,  they  will  decay  and  fall  away  of  themselves. 

And  may  it  not  be  that  in  the  neglect  of  the  princi- 
ples which  have  thus  guided  the  English  people,  has 
arisen  the  ill-success  which  has  hitherto  marked  all  other 
European  revolutions.  The  first  French  revolution,  and 
those  lately  occurring  in  some  other  European  nations, 
released  from  all  the  checks  and  restraints  of  outward 
forms  those  who  had  been  so  held  down  by  sheer,  phy- 
sical force,  that  their  dwarfed  minds  and  palsied  hearts 
had  room  for  no  emotions  but  those  of  selfish  terror  or 
mad  revenge.  No  reverence  for  God  or  man  stayed 


68  WOMAN  IN  AMERICA  I 

their  fierce  hands  as,  seizing  on  these  feelings,  the  dema- 
gogue of  the  hour  swayed  them  hither  or  thither  at  his 
will.  Their  gross  senses  could  not  appreciate  the  force 
of  the  subtle  spirit  of  law,  their  obedience  could  be  ob- 
tained only  by  the  exhibition  of  material  power,  and  thus 
the  institutions,  on  which  their  whole  social  life  rested, 
were  torn  away  root  and  branch  at  one  time,  only  to  be 
built  up  on  the  same  basis  in  succeeding  years.  But  the 
English  revolution,  if  the  name  of  revolution  may  indeed 
be  given  to  that  contest  which  ended  with  a  change  of 
dynasty  in  England,  was  begun,  continued,  and  ended  in 
a  spirit  of  reverence  for  the  law  ;  and  this  reverence 
made  the  victorious  party  wisely  careful  not  to  touch 
one  institution  which  had  become  associated  with  the 
law.  "  As  our  revolution  was  a  vindication  of  ancient 
rights,  so  it  was  conducted  with  strict  attention  to  an- 
cient formalities,"  says  Macaulay,  in  that  masterly  work 
which  has  left  us  little  to  learn  in  relation  to  this  period 
of  English  history. 

And  why  was  it  that  not  till  our  ancestors  had  entered 
on  this  great  contest,  did  one  of  the  many  attempts 
made  to  plant  English  colonies  on  these  shores  prove 
successful  ?  Was  it  that  they  had  now  reached  the  cul- 
minating point  of  their  education  in  the  love  of  liberty 


HER  WORK  AND  HER  REWARD.      69 

and  reverence  for  law ;  that  beyond  this  their  advance 
was  stayed  by  the  very  arrangements  which  had  been 
necessary  to  their  safe  development  so  far ;  that  to  at- 
tain to  a  more  perfect  external  development  of  their  own 
noble  principles,  they  must  be  transplanted  to  a  new 
soil,  and  begin  afresh  the  race  of  life,  free  from  those 
impediments  whose  demolition,  where  they  have  once  ex- 
isted, must  ever  be  attended  with  danger  of  anarchy  and 
misrule  ?  Was  it  that  here,  on  the  basis  of  Christian 
institutions  and  equal  rights,  we  might  find  it  easier  to 
construct  that  fair  temple  which  has  for  its  foundation 
and  its  corner-stone,  "Love  God  supremely,  and  your 
neighbor,  whether  he  be  king  or  beggar,  as  yourself?" 
We  believe  it  was,  and  we  would  ask,  why  have  we 
made  so  little  advance  towards  this  highest  attainment 
in  human  association  ?  The  answer  to  this  question 
-must  be  found,  we  think,  in  the  fact  already  noted,  that 
the  principles  which  we  have  politically  asserted,  we 
have  socially  denied ;  striving  to  establish  socially  the 
inequalities  against  which  we  have  politically  rebelled, 
only  substituting  for  the  distinctions  of  birth  those  crea- 
ted by  wealth. 

In  the  rapid  glance  which  we  have  taken  of  the  vari- 
ous influences  that  have  combined  to  form  the  English 


YO  WOMAN  IN  AMERICA  : 

character,  we  have  seen  a  nation  happily  "  compounded 
of  every  nation's  best,"  trained  to  reverence  of  law  and 
love  of  liberty.  In  America  we  have  seen  this  same 
people  taking  a  position  in  which  that  reverence  for  law 
remained  the  only  restraint  upon  their  actions ;  in  which, 
therefore,  they  were  free  in  the  best  sense  of  the  word, 
free  even  as  God  made  man,  free  from  all  restraint  but 
that  which,  at  the  command  of  an  enlightened  con- 
science, he  imposes  on  himself.  To  those  who  have  fol- 
lowed us  in  this  sketch,  and  who,  assenting  to  the  pro- 
position, that  each  creature  in  the  Providence  of  God 
finds  itself  in  that  condition  for  which  it  is  peculiarly  fit- 
ted, and  may  thus  discover  in  its  offices  the  exact  correl- 
atives of  its  powers, — these  powers  being  the  sum  of  its 
natural  capabilities,  and  of  the  circumstances  under 
which  these  capabilities  have  been  exercised  and  devel- 
oped,— also  think,  with  us,  that  while  man  has  been  en- 
dowed with  qualities  which  render  him  the  proper  con- 
troller of  the  outward  machinery  of  government,  the 
thews  and  sinews  of  society,  woman  is  by  nature  equally 
fitted  to  preside  over  its  inner  spirit,  over  the  homes 
from  which  the  social  as  distinguished  from  the  political 
life  must  be  derived ;  the  conclusion  must,  it  seems  to 
us,  be  irresistible,  that  to  American  women  we  must 


HEE  WOEK  AND  HEE  EEWAED.  l 

look  to  rectify  the  errors  of  American  society,  and  that 
from  them  we  may  hope  to-  derive  a  life  freer  from  fac- 
titious distinctions,  controlled  more  by  enlightened  con- 
victions and  less  by  conventional  forms,  a  life  nobler, 
more  spiritual,  more  in  conformity  with  Christian  prin- 
ciples than  any  the  world  has  yet  seen.  To  such  a  work 
are  we  now  endeavoring  to  awaken  the  attention  of  our 
countrywomen.  It  is  a  noble  work :  a  work  which,  we 
think,  they  must  themselves  acknowledge  to  be  worthy 
the  exercise  of  all  their  powers. 

Permit  us,  in  illustration  of  our  subject,  to  place  be- 
fore you  a  sketch  of  an  American  woman  of  fashion  as 
she  is  and  as  she  might  be — as  she  must  be  to  accom- 
plish the  task  we  would  appoint  her.  Examine  with  a 
careful  eye  "  the  counterfeit  presentment"  of  these  two 
widely  differing  characters,  and  choose  the  model  on 
which  you  will  form  yourselves.  And  first,  by  a  few 
strokes  of  this  magic  wand — the  pen — we  will  conjure 
within  the  charmed  circle  of  your  vision,  the  woman  of 
fashion  as  she  is. 

Flirtilla, — for  so  noted  a  character  must  not  want  a 
name, — may  well  be  pronounced  a  favorite  of  nature  and 
of  fortune.  To  the  first  she  owed  a  pleasing  person  and 
a  mind  which  offered  no  unapt  soil  for  cultivation ;  by 


72  WOMAN  IN  AMERICA  I 

favor  of  the  last,  she  was  born  the  heiress  to  wealth  and 
to  those  advantages  which  wealth  unquestionably  con- 
fers. Her  childhood  was  carefully  sequestered  from  all 
vulgar  influences,  and  she  was  early  taught,  that  to  be  a 
little  lady  was  her  highest  possible  attainment.  At  six 
years  old  she  astonished  the.tlite  assembled  in  her  fa- 
ther's halls,  and  even  dazzled  the  larger  assemblages  of 
Saratoga  by  her  grace  in  dancing  and  by  the  ease  with 
which  she  conversed  in  French,  which,  as  it  was  the  lan- 
guage of  her  nursery  attendants,  had  been  a  second 
mother-tongue  to  her.  At  the  fashionable  boarding- 
school,  at  which  her  education  was,  in  common  parlance, 
completed,  she  distanced  all  competitors  for  the  prizes  in 
modern  languages,  dancing,  and  music  ;  and  acquired  so 
much  acquaintance  with  geography  and  history  as  would 
secure  her  from  mistaking  Prussia  for  Persia,  or  imagin- 
ing that  Lord  Wellington  had  conquered  Julius  Caesar — 
in  other  words,  so  much  knowledge  of  them  as  would 
guard  her  from  betraying  her  ignorance.  To  these  ac- 
quirements she  added  a  slight  smattering  of  various  natu- 
ral sciences.  All  these  accomplishments  had  nearly  been 
lost  to  the  world,  by  her  forming  an  attachment  for  one 
of  fine  qualities,  personal  and  mental,  who  was  entirely 
destitute  of  fortune.  From  the  fatal  mistake  of  yielding 


HER  WORK  AND  HER  REWARD.  3 

to  such  an  attachment  she  was  preserved  by  a  judicious 
mother,  who  placed  before  her  in  vivid  contrast  the  com- 
manding position  in  which  she  would  be  placed  as  the 
wife  of  Mr.  A — ,  with  his  houses  and  lands,  his  bank 
stock  and  magnificent  equipage ;  and  the  mediocre  sta- 
tion she  would  occupy  as  Mrs.  B — ,  a  station  to  which 
one  of  her  aspiring  mind  could  not  readily  succumb,  even 
though  she  found  herself  there  in  company  with  one  of 
the  most  interesting  and  agreeable  of  men.  Relinquish- 
ing with  a  sigh  the  gratification  of  the  last  sentiment  that 
bound  her  to  nature  and  .to  rational  life,  she  magnani- 
mously sacrificed  her  inclinations  to  her  sense  of  duty, 
and  became  Mrs.  A—.  From  this  time  her  course  has 
been  undisturbed  by  one  faltering  feeling,  one  wavering 
thought.  She  has  visited  London  and  Paris,  only  that 
she  might  assure  herself  that  her  house  possessed  all 
which  was  considered  essential  to  a  genteel  establishment 
in  the  first,  and  that  her  toilette  was  the  most  rechercM 
that  could  be  obtained  in  the  last.  She  laughs  at  the 
very  idea  of  wearing  any  thing  made  in  America,  and  is 
exceedingly  merry  over  the  portraitures  of  Yankee  char- 
acter and  Yankee  life  occasionally  to  be  met  in  the  pages 
of  foreign  tourists,  or  to  be  seen  personated  in  foreign 
theatres.  She  complains  much  of  the  prpmiscuous  char- 

Y 


74  WOMAIST  EST  AMEKICA: 

acter  of  American  society,  dances  in  no  set  but  her  own, 
and,  in  order  to  secure  her  exclusiveness  from  contact 
with  the  common  herd,  moves  about  from  one  point  of 
fashionable  life  to  another,  attended  by  the  same  satel- 
lites, to  whom  she  is  the  great  centre  of  attraction.  Her 
manners,  like  her  dresses,  are  imported  from  Paris.  She 
talks  and  laughs  very  loudly  at  all  public  places,  lectures, 
concerts,  and  the  like  ;  and  has  sometimes,  even  in  the 
house  of  God,  expressed  audibly  her  assent  with  or  dissent 
from  the  preacher,  that  she  may  prove  herself  entirely  free 
from  that  shockingly  American  mauvaise  honte,  which  she 
supposes  to  be  all  that  keeps  other  women  silent.  Any 
gentleman  desiring  admission  to  her  circle  must  produce 
authentic  credentials  that  he  has  been  abroad,  must  wear 
his  mustaches  after  the  latest  Parisian  cut,  must  interlard 
his  bad  English  with  worse  French,  and  must  be  familiar 
with  the  names  and  histories  of  the  latest  ballet-dancers 
and  opera-singers  who  have  created  a  fever  of  excitement 
abroad.  To  foreigners  she  is  particularly  gracious,  and 
nothing  throws  her  into  such  a  fervor  of  activity  as  the 
arrival  in  the  country  of  an  English  Lord,  a  German 
Baron,,  or  a  French  or  Italian  Count.  To  draw  such  a 
character  within  her  circle  she  thinks  no  effort  too  great, 
no  sacrifice  of  feeling  too  humiliating. 


HER  WORK  AND  HER  REWARD.      75 

It  may  be  objected  that  all  our  descriptions  of  the 
fashionable  woman  as  she  is,  relates  to  externals ;  that 
of  the  essential  character,  the  inner  life,  we  have,  in 
truth,  said  nothing.  But  what  can  we  do  ?  So  far  as 
we  have  yet  been  able  to  discover,  this  class  is  destitute 
of  any  inner  life.  Those  who  compose  it  live  for  the 
world  and  in  the  world.  Home  is  with  them  only  the 
place  in  which  they  receive  visits.  We  acknowledge 
that  few  in  our  country  have  yet  attained  to  so  per- 
fect a  development  of  fashionable  character  as  we  have 
here  described ;  but  to  some  it  is  already  an  attain- 
ment ;  to  many — we  fear  to  most,  young  women  of  what 
are  called  the  higher  classes  in  our  large  cities — it  is  an 
aim.  Nobler  spirits  there  are,  indeed,  among  us,  of  every 
age  and  every  class,  and  from  these  we  must  choose 
our  example  of  a  woman  of  fashion  as  she  should  be. 
On  her,  too,  we  will  bestow  a  name — a  name  asso- 
ciated with  all  gentle  and  benignant  influences — the 
name  of  her  who  in  her  shaded  retreats  received  of  old 
the  ruler  of  earth's  proudest  empire,  that  she  might 
"  breathe  off  with  the  holy  air"  of  her  pure  affection, 
"  that  dust  o'  the  heart"  caught  from  contact  with  coarser 
spirits.  So  have  we  dreamed  of  Egeria,  and  Egeria 
shall  be  the  name  of  our  heroine.  Heroine  indeed,  for 


76  WOMAN  ix  AMERICA: 


heroic  must  be  her  life.  With  eyes  uplifted  to  a  pro- 
tecting Heaven,  she  must  walk  the  narrow  path  of  right, 
— a  precipice  on  either  hand, — never  submitting  in  her 
lowliness  of  soul,  to  the  encroachments  of  the  selfish, 
and  eager,  and  clamorous  crowd, — never  bowing  her 
own  native  nobility  to  the  dictation  of  those  whom  the 
world  styles  great.  "  Resisting  the  proud,  but  giving 
grace  unto  the  humble,"  if  we  may  without  irrev- 
erence appropriate  to  a  mortal,  words  descriptive  of 
Him  whose  unapproachable  and  glorious  holiness  we  are 
exhorted  to  imitate. 

In  society,  Egeria  is  more  desirous  to  please  than  to 
shine.  Her  associates  are  selected  mainly  for  their 
personal  qualities,  and  if  she  is  peculiarly  attentive  and 
deferential  to  any  class,  it  is  to  those  unfortunates  whom 
poverty,  the  accidents  of  birth,  or  the  false  arrangements 
of  society,  have  divorced  from  a  sphere  for  which  their 
refinement  of  tasT;e  and  manner  and  their  intellectual  cul- 
tivation had  fitted  them.  Admission  to  her  society  is 
sought  as  a  distinction,  because  it  is  known  that  it  must 
be  purchased  by  something  more  than  a  graceful  address, 
a  well-curled  mustache,  or  the  reputation  of  a  travelled 
man.  At  her  entertainments,  you  will  often  meet  some 
whom  you  will  meet  nowhere  else ;  some  promising 


HER  WORK  AKD  HER  REWARD. 

young  artist,  yet  unknown  to  fame, — some  who,  once 
standing  in  the  sunshine  of  fortune,  were  well  known  to 
many  whose  vision  is  too  imperfect  for  the  recognition  of 
features  over  which  adversity  has  thrown  its  shadow. 
The  influence  of  Egeria  is  felt  through  the  whole  circle 
of  her  acquaintance ; — she  encourages  the  young  to  high 
aims  and  persevering  efforts, — she  brightens  the  fading 
light  of  the  aged,  but  above  all  is  she  a  blessing  and  a 
glory  within  her  own  home.  Her  husband  cannot  look 
on  her — to  borrow  Longfellow's  beautiful  thought — 
without  "  reading  in  the  serene  expression  of  her  face, 
the  Divine  beatitude,  '  Blessed  are  the  pure  in  heart.'  " 
Her  children  revere  her  as  the  earthly  type  of  perfect 
love.  They  learn  even  more  from  her  example  than  her 
precept,  that  they  are  to  live  not  to  themselves,  but  to 
their  fellow-creatures,  and  to  God  in  them.  She  has  so 
cultivated  their  taste  for  all  which  is  beautiful  and  noble, 
that  they  cannot  but  desire  to  conform  themselves  to 
such  models.  She  has  taught  them  to  love  their  coun- 
try and  devote  themselves  to  its  advancement — not  be- 
cause it  excels  all  others,  but  because  it  is  that  to  which 
God  in  his  providence  united  them,  and  whose  advance- 
ment and  true  interest  they  are  bound  to  seek  by  all  just 
and  Christian  methods.  In  a  word,  she  has  never  for- 


78  WOMAN  iisr  AMEEICA: 

gotten  that  they  were  immortal  and  responsible  beings, 
and  this  thought  has  reappeared  in  every  impression  she 
has  stamped  upon  their  minds. 

But  it  is  her  conduct  towards  those  in  a  social  po- 
sition inferior  to  her  own,  which  individualizes  most 
strongly  the  character  of  Egeria.  Remembering  that 
there  are  none  who  may  not,  under  our  free  institu- 
tions, attain  to  positions  of  influence  and  responsibility, 
she  endeavors,  in  all  her  intercourse  with  them,  to 
awaken  their  self-respect  and  desire  for  improvement, 
and  she  is  ever  ready  to  aid  them  in  the  attainment 
of  that  desire,  and  thus  to  fit  them  for  the  perform- 
ance of  those  duties  that  may  devolve  on  them. 

"  Are  you  not  afraid  that  Bridget  will  leave  you,  if, 
by  your  lessons,  you  fit  her  for  some  higher  position  ?" 
asked  a  lady,  on  finding  her  teaching  embroidery  to  a 
servant  who  had  shown  much  aptitude  for  it. 

"  If  Bridget  can  advance  her  interest  by  leaving  me, 
she  shall  have  my  cheerful  consent  to  go.  God  for- 
bid that  I  should  stand  in  the  way  of  good  to  any 
fellow- creature — above  all,  to  one  whom,  by  placing 
her  under  my  temporary  protection,  he  has  made  it 
especially  my  duty  to  serve,"  was  her  reply. 

In  the  general  ignorance  and  vice  of  the  population 


HEE  WOEK  AXD  HEE  EEWAED.  79 

daily  pouring  into  our  country  from  foreign  lands,  Egeria 
finds  new  reason  for  activity,  in  the  moral  and  intellec- 
tual advancement  of  all  who  are  brought  within  her 
sphere  of  influence. 

Egeria  has  been  accused  of  being  ambitious  for  her 
children.  "  I  am  ambitious  for  them,"  she  replies ;  "  am- 
bitious that  they  should  occupy  stations  that  may  be 
as  a  vantage-ground  from  which  to  act  for  the  public 


Notwithstanding  this  ambition,  she  has,  to  the  aston- 
ishment of  many  in  her  own  circle,  consented  that  one 
of  her  sons  should  devote  himself  to  mechanics.  r  She 
was  at  first  pitied  for  this,  as  a  mortification  to  which 
she  must  certainly  have  been  compelled,  by  her  hus- 
band's singular  notions,  to  submit. 

"You  mistake,"  said  Egeria,  to  one  who  delicately 
expressed  this  pity  to  her ;  "  my  son's  choice  of  a  trade 
had  my  hearty  concurrence.  I  was  prepared  for  it  by 
the  whole  bias  of  his  mind  from  childhood.  He  will 
excel  in  the  career  he  has  chosen,  I  have  no  doubt ;  for 
he  has  abilities  equal  to  either  of  his  brothers,  and  he 
loves  the  object  to  which  he  has  devoted  them.  As  a 
lawyer  or  physician  he  would,  probably,  have  but  added 
one  to  the  number  of  mediocre  practitioners  who  lounge 


80  WOMAN  EST  AMERICA  I 

through  life  with  no  higher  aim  than  their  own  main- 
tenance." 

"But  then,"  it  was  objected,  "he  would  not  have 
sacrificed  his  position  in  society." 

Egeria  is  human,  and  the  sudden  flush  of  indignation 
must  have  crimsoned  the  mother's  brow  at  this ;  and 
somewhat  of  scorn,  we  doubt  not,  was  in  the  smile  that 
curled  her  lip  as  she  replied,  "  My  son  can  afford  to  lose 
the  acquaintance  of  those  who  cannot  appreciate  the  true 
nobility  and  independence  of  spirit  which  have  made 
him  choose  a  position  offering,  as  he  believes,  the  highest 
means  of  development  for  his  own  peculiar  powers,  and 
the  greatest  probability,  therefore,  of  his  becoming  use- 
ful to  others." 

Our  sketches  are  finished — imperfect  sketches  we  ac- 
knowledge them.  It  would  have  been  a  labor  of  love  to 
have  rendered  the  last  complete — to  have  followed  the 
steps  of  Egeria — the  Christian  gentlewoman — through  at 
least  one  day  of  her  life ;  to  have  shown  her  embellish- 
ing her  social  circle  by  her  graces  of  manner  and  charms 
of  conversation,  and  to  have  accompanied  her  from  the 
saloons  which  she  thus  adorned,  to  more  humble  abodes. 
In  these  abodes  she  was  ever  a  welcome  as  well  as  an 
honored  guest,  for  she  bore  thither  a  respectful  consider- 


HER  WORK  AXD  HER  REWARD.  81 

ation  for  their  inmates,  which  is  a  rarer  and  more  coveted 
gift  to  the  poor  than  any  wealth  can  purchase.  Having 
done  this,  we  would  have  liked  to  glance  at  her  in  the 
tranquil  evening  of  a  life  well  spent,  and  to  contrast  her 
then  with  Flirtilla,  old  beyond  the  power  of  rouge,  false 
teeth,  and  false  hair,  to  disguise — still  running  through 
a  round  of  pleasures  that  have  ceased  to  charm,  regret- 
ting the  past,  dissatisfied  with  the  present,  and  dreading 
the  future,  alternately  courting  and  abusing  the  world, 
which  has  grown  weary  of  her.  But  to  stray  into  these 
flowery  paths  of  imagination,  would  lead  us  too  far 
away  from  a  graver  purpose,  to  which  we  return. 


82  WOMAN  ESr  AMERICA 


CHAPTER  VII, 

CHRISTIAN    CIVILIZATION. 

As  we  have  advanced  in  our  argument,  we  have  be- 
come more  and  more  convinced,  that  the  difference  be- 
tween the  civilization  we  are  endeavoring  to  portray,  and 
that  which  has  hitherto  been  the  aim  of  nations  the  most 
advanced  in  intellectual  and  even  in  religious  culture,  is, 
that  the  former  is  a  Christian  civilization — a  civilization 
which  moulds  the  spirit  into  shapes  of  grace  and  beauty, 
and  on  these  lays  all  external  decorations,  as  a  suitable 
drapery ; — while  the  latter  considers  all  spiritual  educa- 
tion as  a  thing  apart  from  itself,  and  is  satisfied  to  con- 
ceal by  a  beautiful  exterior  the  deformities  which  lie 
deep  within.  Let  us  not  be  accused  of  saying,  that  all 
nations  before  us  have  neglected  spiritual  education. 
From  the  low  roofs  beneath  which  peasant  mothers  lull 
their  babes  to  sleep  with  Christian  hymns,  and  from 


HEE  WOEK  AND  HEE  EEWAED.  83" 

gorgeous  cathedrals,  whose  vaulted  roofs  reverberate 
each  day  anthems  of  praise  to  the  Most  High, — from  the 
"  ragged  schools"  in  which  outcast  children  have  been 
gathered  by  the  most  self-sacrificing  philanthropists  the 
world  ever  saw,  and  from  those  spacious  colleges  which 
have  been  for  ages  a  nation's  boast — would  come  voices 
of  denial  to  a  dogma  so  absurd,  illiberal,  and  untrue.  It 
is  not  of  the  lack  of  spiritual  education  in  older  lands 
that  we  complain,  but  that  it  has  been  a  thing  apart  from 
their  civilization,  which  might  have  been  grafted  as  easi- 
ly upon  a  Pagan  as  a  Christian  faith — nay,  more  easily, 
for  where  their  religion  and  their  civilization  have  met, 
they  have  met,  not  as  friends,  but  as  antagonists.  Who 
in  London  or  Paris  would  be  thought  to  have  attained 
to  the  highest  degree  of  social  refinement — she  who, 
respecting  the  sanctity  of  those  hours  which  God  had 
marked  as  His  own,  and  desiring  to  be  "  in  the  spirit  on 
the  Lord's  day,"  should  refuse  to  spend  the  evening  of 
Saturday  in  amusements  calculated  to  dissipate  all  seri- 
ous thought,  should  make  a  point  of  conscience  of  a 
regular  attendance  on  the  services  of  the  sanctuary,  and 
of  an  earnest  regard  to  those  services — or  she  who 
thinks  of  Saturday  only  as  the  best  night  for  the  opera, 
and  of  Sunday  as  a  day  of  ennui  scarcely  to  be  borne, 


WOMAN  ESr  AMERICA : 


were  it  not  for  the  fashionable  drive,  more  thronged  on 
that  than  on  other  days,  and  for  the  succession  of  visitors 
whom  she  is  too  much  engaged  to  receive  during  the 
week? 

That  to  which  we  would  exhort  our  countrywomen,  is, 
to  make  the  tree  good  that  its  fruit  may  be  good,  and  its 
flowers  and  foliage  enduring  in  their  beauty,  because 
sustained  by  an  inner  life.  We  would  spare  no  true  re- 
finement, no  external  grace,  from  our  plan  of  education. 
The  nicely  modulated  voice,  whose  subtle  melody  steals 
sometimes  to  the  heart  wrapped  in  a  thousand  folds  of 
selfishness — the  gentle  grace  that  wins  regard — the 
modest  dignity  which  commands  respect  from  insolence 
itself — we  would  have  them  all ;  not  as  a  dress  to  be 
worn  on  state  occasions,  but  as  an  inseparable  part  of 
the  person — the  spontaneous  developments  of  a  living 
spirit.  We  may  be  told,  with  a  smile,  that  we  are  re- 
vealing no  new  discovery  in  education,  in  thus  marking 
the  desirableness  of  a  harmonious  cultivation  of  all  the 
powers — the  spiritual  as  well  as  the  physical — those  of 
thought  and  feeling  as  well  as  of  expression.  To  such  a 
suggestion  we  would  most  respectfully  reply,  that  the 
education  of  which  we  speak,  is  not  that  of  the  school  or 
the  pulpit,  but  that  of  society.  And  to  produce  such 


HER  WORK  AND  HER  REWARD.  85 

results,  our  social  life  must  be  something  more  than 
a  wonderfully  correct  imitation,  considering  our  small 
means,  of  the  imposing  life  of  other  lands — it  must  be  a 
true  life,  a  being,  not  a  seeming.  Better  the  plainest  and 
lowliest  being,  whose  unattractive  form  shrouds  a  li ring 
spirit — who  thinks,  and  speaks,  and  acts,  from  a  self- 
directing  impulse. — than  the  loveliest  statue  ever  mod- 
elled by  the  hand  of  man,  though  the  skill  of  the  arti- 
ficer may  have  added  to  its  beauty  the  powers  of  the 
automaton,  in  speech  and  action. 

We  have  already  endeavored  to  show  what,  even  at 
the  risk  of  wearying  our  readers,  we  must  repeat,  that 
the  social  arrangements  we  are  imitating  can  only  have 
life  in  the  soil  over  which  feudalism  once  spread  its 
gigantic  branches.  They  must  be  grafted  on  that  stock 
to  flourish.  There  they  still  have  life  and  meaning.  In 
countries  whose  population  has  increased  beyond  their 
resources,  or  whose  resources  are  so  apportioned,  that, 
while  the  few  live  in  a  luxury  we  would  vainly  covet, 
the  many  must  toil  from  light  to  dark,  for  food  and  rai- 
ment and  shelter,  there  is  meaning  in  those  outward 
shows,  which  mark  more  emphatically  than  any  law 
could  do,  to  the  brutish  minds  of  the  crowd,  the  majesty 
of  their  rulers.  Where  there  are  various  orders  in  a  state, 

8 


86  WOMAN  EST  AMEEICA  : 

on  whose  preservation  the  safety  of  that  state  depends, 
there  is  meaning  and  life  even  in  the  refinements  and 
courtesies  of  polite  society,  apart  from  the  spirit  of  him 
who  practises  them.  These  refinements  and  courtesies 
say  to  the  brutish  herd :  "  You  are  not  of  us ;  toil  on 
through  your  wearisome  day,  and  when  night  comes, 
sleep  the  unbroken  sleep  which  comes  only  to  the  worker 
— rarely  indeed  to  the  thinker.  We  to  whom  knowledge 
has  given  power,  we  who  bear  about  us,  as  you  see,  im- 
pressed on  our  brows,  speaking  through  our  lips,  and 
manifesting  itself  in  our  every  movement,  the  visible 
signs  of  that  power — we  will  think  for  you,  fight  for  you, 
and  guard  you  from  that  anarchy,  that  universal  war- 
fare, into  which,  if  deserted  by  us,  in  your  ignorance  and 
your  wretchedness,  you  must  fall,  and  which  is  worse 
than  the  worst  despotism."  And  the  more  imposing  the 
forms  under  which  the  life  of  the  upper  classes  presents 
itself,  the  more  impressive  is  the  utterance  of  these  dicta. 
But  where  there  is  freedom,  where  the  people  are 
their  own  rulers,  society  should  assume  a  simpler  aspect ; 
for  from  the  spirit  of  the  people  must  it  receive  its  char- 
acter, so  far  as  it  is  any  thing  more  than  a  system  of 
dead  forms,  a  mere  automaton. 

And  now,  are  we,  the  women  of  America,  prepared 


HER  WORK  ASTD  HER  REWARD.  87 

to  say :  "It  shall  be  thus  with  us ;  our  social  life 
shall  reflect  the  free,  independent  spirit  of  our  people. 
The  old  American  life,  noble  in  its  simplicity,  shall  not 
be  stifled  beneath  a  mass  of  foreign  fripperies,  meaning- 
less to  us  at  least.  Understanding  our  mission,  we 
will,  with  God's  help,  perform  it.  Sacrificing  no  refine- 
ment, relinquishing  no  grace,  cherishing  all  the  gentle 
courtesies  of  life  as  expressions  of  its  cordial  sympa- 
thies, we  will  not  be  tempted  from  the  beautiful 
simplicity  of  our  mothers,  by  the  follies  of  a  little 
circle  of  successful  speculators — millionaires  with  heavy 
purses  and  light  heads,  who  having  found  even  then- 
wealth  insufficient  to  maintain  the  expenses  of  fashionable 
life  in  Europe,  would  establish  a  second-rate  imitation  of 
it  here.  Wealth,  and  its  gifts  of  dress  and  equipage, 
shall  not  win  us  to  countenance  vice  or  to  flatter  folly. 
The  simplest  garb  and  most  retired  home  shall  not  veil 
from  our  earnest  search,  or  withdraw  from  our  friendly 
circle,  those  whose  virtue,  intelligence,  and  refinement, 
make  them  worthy  of  our  regard,  and  capable  of  sympa- 
thizing with  our  own  high  objects.  While  we  look  cold- 
ly upon  those  who  would  establish  themselves  in  that 
circle,  upon  no  better  claim  than  that  of  wealth,  too  new 
to  have  won  for  its  possessor  even  the  superficial  gloss 


WOMAN  IN  AMERICA: 


which  sometimes  veils  innate  vulgarity ;  we  will  delight 
"to  hold  dut  a  helping  hand  to  the  poor  scholar,  who, 
with  a  mind  rich  in  God's  best  gifts,  is  compelled  to  plod 
his  weary  way  along  thoroughfares  thronged  Avith  the 
ignorant  and  the  coarse,  thirsting  and  thirsting  in  vain 
for  companionship  with  the  refined  and  cultivated.  We 
will  call  to  our  side  the  gentle  girl,  who,  even  in  the  un- 
congenial atmosphere  to  which  poverty  has  condemned 
her,  cherishes  her  sympathies  with  all  the  refinements 
that  embellish  our  lives ;  and,  that  these  may  stand  be- 
side us  unshamed,  we  will  keep  those  lives  within  the 
limits  of  an  elegant  simplicity.  Denying  ourselves  noth- 
ing that  will  serve  as  means  of  culture,  we  will  sacrifice, 
if  need  be,  to  such  treasures,  the  vulgar  love  for  personal 
decoration,  or  the  mad  search  for  gayeties,  which  would 
ill  assort  with  the  untroubled  serenity  of  minds  dwelling 
in  a  region  elevated  above  the  sensual.  The  generous 
hospitalities  which  were  wont  to  characterize  our  homes, 
shall  not  be  lessened,  that  we  may  appear  in  laces  that  a 
queen  might  wear,  or  jewels  that  would  become  a  birth- 
night  ball.  A  suit  of  diamonds  shall  have  no  charm  for 
us,  in  comparison  with  a  picture  or  a  statue  bearing  the 
undying  impress  of  the  immortal  mind  from  which  it 
sprang.  We  will  tread  on  carpets  less  soft  than  those 


HER  WORK  AXD  HER  REWARD.  89 

woven  by  Persian  looms,  we  will  want  the  gilded  cornice 
and  the  fretted  roof,  we  will  consent  to  relinquish  the* 
indisputable  elegance  of  rose-wood  and  or-molu,  if,  by 
yielding  these,  we  may  secure  that  best  room  of  -all  in  a 
house,  a  spacious  library,  in  which  we  may  command  at 
will  the  noblest  powers  of  the  noblest  men  of  every  age 
and  every  land — in  which  magic  spells  are  stored,  power- 
ful to  conjure  before  our  dazzled  vision  scenes  of  such 
splendor  as  would  make  the  realities  of  many  a  royal 
palace  dim.  Is  or  shall  this  be  a  selfish  enjoyment.  If, 
by  this  disposal  of  our  wealth,  we  have  denied  ourselves 
the  poor,  mean  triumph  of  outshining  our  neighbors  in 
some  butterfly  ball,  or  of  assembling  our  dear  five  hun- 
dred friends  to  gaze  with  envious  hearts  upon  our  tinsel 
splendor,  we  will  invite  all  of  them  who  have  minds  to 
prize  our  nobler  treasures  to  enjoy  them  with  us — espe- 
cially will  we  bid  to  this  '  feast  of  reason'  those  to  whom 
a  less  favoring  destiny  has  denied  the  power  of  gratifying 
such  tastes.  Thus,  in  our  measure,  will  we  work  to  cul- 
tivate and  refine  all  around  us,  and  to  produce  that  only 
true  equality,  an  equality  of  mind,  without  some  ap- 
proach to  which  a  republic  is  a  dream,  and  will  pass  like 
a  dream  away." 

Equality  of  mind  !     Shall  the  workers  of  a  nation — 
8* 


90  WOMAN  IN  AMERICA 

the  hard-handed  men  of  toil  become  likewise  men  of 
thought  ?  Here  only  of  all  the  world — here,  where  labor 
is  so  well  rewarded,  where  the  necessaries  of  life  are  so 
easily  obtained,  and  the  diffusion  of  intelligence  is  so 
general — may  these  characters  be  united  and  man  stand 
complete  in. every  faculty.  Every  thing  here  tends  to 
this  desired  consummation.  Elihu  Burritt  has  already 
taught  us  what  one  laboring  man  can  do ;  while  from  our 
factories  have  gone  forth  contributions  to  our  literature, 
conned  amid  the  unceasing  whirl  of  looms  and  spindles, 
not  less  valuable,  to  say  the  least,  than  many  of  the 
same  class  penned  in  the  repose  of  the  tasteful  boudoir. 
The  labor  which  accomplishes  its  ends  without  becoming 
so  extreme  as  to  exhaust  the  vital  powers,  stimulates  our 
mental  faculties,  and  brings  them  into  fuller  and  healthier 
play.  We  shall  have  probably  few  learned  pundits  in 
our  land,  few  men  who  live  a  life  dissevered  from  that  of 
the  rest  of  the  world — who  would  think  more  of  the 
discovery  of  a  long  missing  Greek  folio  than  of  a  new 
continent — who  would  exult  more  at  detecting  in  the 
language  of  some  modern  nation  an  undoubted  relation- 
ship to  that  spoken  ages  ago  in  the  forests  of  Germany, 
on  the  shores  of  the  Black  Sea,  or  amid  the  sands  of  the 
desert,  than  in  catching  the  first  notes  of  that  hymn  of 


HER  WORK  AKD  HEE  REWARD.  91 

universal  freedom,  which  is  one  day  to  sound  from  shore 
to  shore,  and  by  the  thrill  it  wakes  in  every  human 
heart,  to  prove  the  brotherhood  of  all.  Our  learned 
men  must  still  be  living  men.  No  princely  patrons  or 
rich  endowments  will  enable  them  to  live  apart  from 
their  fellows.  They,  too,  must  work  and  grow  weary, 
and  refresh  themselves  at  the  fountain  of  all  bright  and 
pure  thoughts — home — the  home  of  mother,  sister,  wife. 
They,  too,  must  learn  through  trial — through  success 
painfully  bought  and  suffering  patiently  endured — to 
sympathize  with  the  common  heart.  Shall  we  mourn 
this  ?  Shall  we  say,  that  with  us,  as  there  is  no  chief  in 
the  political  world,  so  there  will  be  none  in  letters — that 
in  our  land  there  will  be  no  mountain  peak  from  whose 
glow  the  nations  shall  first  hail  the  coming  dawn  ?  To 
this  we  have  but  one  answer — it  was  precisely  in  such  a 
life  of  toil  and  suffering  that  Shakspeare  and  Milton 
were  formed. 

It  is  only,  as  we  believe,  in  such  an  amalgamation  of 
two  classes  hitherto  held  distinct — in  such  a  fusing  to- 
gether, as  it  were,  of  labor  with  thought  and  refinement 
— that  we  shall  attain  to  the  perfect  type  of  man.  Even 
sinless  man,  over  whose  frame  disease  had  no  power, 
was  not  left  wholly  idle.  He  had 


92  WOMAIST  E*  AMERICA  I 

'•  A  pleasant  labor,  to  reform 
The  flowery  arbors  and  the  alleys  green" 

of  Eden.  To  sinful  man  the  first  award  of  Infinite  Wis- 
dom and  Love  was,  "  By  the  sweat  of  thy  brow  shalt 
thou  win  thy  bread ;"  and  who  that  has  looked  with  an 
observant  eye  find  a  reflecting  mind  on  the  face  of  the 
earth,  has  not  felt  that  it  was  Love  which  dictated  this 
award?  "There  is,"  says  Carlyle,  "a  perennial  noble- 
ness and  even  sacredness  in  work."  Heaven,  we  be- 
lieve, is  no  place  for  the  indulgence  of  sloth.  Happy 
spirits,  we  doubt  not,  work,  though  their  work,  like  that 
of  the  God-Man,  is  noble,  and  spiritual,  and  free,  spring- 
ing spontaneously  from  an  impulse  within,  not  constrained 
by  external  circumstances.  To  this  .we  shall  probably 
never  attain  on  earth  ;  but  as  we  become  elevated  by  in- 
telligence and  refinement,  and,  above  all,  by  that  love  to 
God  and  love  to  man,  which  is  the  culminating  point  of 
all  intelligence  and  all  refinement,  our  work  will  doubt- 
less make  some  approximation  to  the  freedom,  and  the 
joyousness,  and  the  nobility  of  angels'  work.  Already 
intelligence  has  done  much  to  lessen  the  drudgery,  the 
brutalizing  influence  of  excessive  labor ;  but  the  mechani- 
cal arts  through  which  this  has  been  accomplished,  have 
been  hitherto  applied  only  to  individual  emolument ; — • 


HER  WORK  AND  HER  REWARD.      93 

they  have  yet  to  receive  a  neAV  and  mightier  impulse 
from  Christian  benevolence — from  the  desire  to  elevate 
to  a  nobler  life,  the  whole  human  race. 

We  are  not  so  Quixotic  as  to  believe,  that  words  of 
ours  may  prevail  on  the  idle  children  of  luxury  to  take 
their  fair  share  of  the  world's  labor,  that  their  brothers 
may  not  sink  beneath  the  burden  forced  on  them.  Still 
less  can  we  hope  to  persuade  them,  that  they  would  find 
the  law  of  labor,  within  certain  limits,  a  beneficent  law  in 
its  action  upon  themselves.  They  would  perhaps  ask  us, 
Shall  we  reject  the  services  of  those  who  depend  on  our 
payment  of  those  services  for  bread,  that  we  may  have 
work  for  ourselves  ?  We  answer,  Far  from  it ;  we  would 
have  you  exact  less  for  the  payment  you  give,  and  make 
up  the  lack  of  service  by  your  own  exertion.  Thus 
Avould  you  gain,  perchance,  health  of  mind  and  body, 
and  your  brother  man  some  of  that  time  which  would 
be  to  him  an  invaluable  boon,  and  which  is  to  you  often 
an  intolerable  burden. 

As  we  have  said,  however,  we  have  no  hope  of  pro- 
ducing such  an  influence  on  the  luxurious  idler,  and 
we  would  not  Avaste  our  energies  on  a  hopeless  task. 
But  there  is  another  class,  on  the  yet  unhardened  moulds 
of  Avhose  characters  and  destinies  we  would  fain  flatter 


94  WOMAN  IN  AMERICA  I 

ourselves  that  even  our  feeble  words  may  fall  with  some 
good  effect.  Few  familiar  with  our  social  life,  can  have 
failed  to  remark  the  number  of  young  men  among  us 
seeking  work  and  finding  none,  because,  while  their 
powers  have  never  been  trained  to  application  in  a  de- 
fined line,  they  are  unwilling  to  apply  them  in  the  only 
way  in  which  undisciplined  power  may  be  used  success- 
fully— in  real,  manual  labor.  These  young  men  are  gen- 
erally the  sons  of  fathers  possessing  just  wealth  enough 
to  maintain  what  is  called,  under  the  false  social  system 
we  are  combating,  a  genteel  establishment.  They  have 
been  born  in  luxurious  homes,  which  the  death  of  the 
father,  and  the  consequent  division  of  property,  have  dis- 
mantled. They  are  now  left  with  no  means  of  securing 
the  expensive  training  necessary  to  the  practice  of  either 
of  the  learned  professions,  and  with  ideas  of  life  which 
forbid  them  to  use  their  strength  in  the  only  way  in 
which  they  could  make  it  available  for  their  support. 
Thus  the  best  years  of  their  lives — the  very  spring-tide 
of  their  powers — is  wasted  in  hopeless  inaction,  and  all 
manliness  and  independence  of  character  is  lost,  while 
they  sue  and  cringe  to  this  patron  and  to  that  for  aid  to 
support  their  fading  gentility,  till,  wearied  by  their  im- 
portunities and  disgusted  with  their  servility,  the  very 


HER  WORK  AXD  HER  REWARD.  95 

circle  for  which  they  have  sacrificed  all  that  was  truly- 
valuable  in  themselves,  contemn  and  disown  them. 

To  reform  this  great  evil  and  to  rectify  those  false 
views  from  which  it  springs — woman — woman,  especially 
in  that  class  which  gives  the  tone  to  manners,  may 
greatly  if  not  chiefly  contribute.  Let  her  show  that,  in 
her  opinion,  labor  imprints  no  brand  upon  the  brow — 
that  there  shall  be,  with  her  consent,  no  social  ban  upon 
it — let  her  make  her  social  life  so  simple  that  the  laborer 
may  partake  it,  if  he  have  acquired  the  refinement  neces- 
sary to  place  him  in  sympathy  with  it,  and  he  will  set 
this  before  him  as  a  new  and  most  influential  motive  for 
the  exertion -of  every  faculty.  Still  more,  in  that  house- 
hold which  is  her  own  peculiar  realm,  let  her  endeavor 
to  awaken  the  dormant  faculties  of  all  around  her.  Let 
her  never  deny  to  the  workers  there  some  leisure  for  the 
cultivation  of  the  spiritual  part  of  their  nature.  Say 
not,  were  this  generally  done,  we  should  soon  have  no 
servants.  You  will  always  have  helpers  in  every  depart- 
ment of  labor — for  the  poor  we  are  assured  we  shall 
have  always  with  us — and  the  more  intelligent  and  re- 
fined these  helpers,  the  better  for  us  and  for  our  chil- 
dren. Perchance  you  smile  at  the  idea  of  refinement  as 
connected  with  some  acts  of  household  necessity.  Look 


WOMAN  IN  AMEKICA  I 


abroad,  scorner,  over  the  length  and  breadth  of  the  land, 
and  see  in  what  has  art  of  late  so.  manifested  its  power 
as  in.  lessening  the  drudgery  of  the  house-worker,  and  in 
taking  from  her  office  all  that  was  offensive  to  good  taste 
or  incompatible  with  true  refinement.  We  have  ad- 
verted to  these  mechanical  improvements  in  all  labor,  as 
promises  of  "  a  good  time  coming."  It  will  surely  come. 
Let  us,  women  of  America,  be  its  glad  ushers.  Not  by 
laying  aside  the  distinctive  character  of  our  sex  to  enter 
the  halls  of  legislation,  as  petitioners  or  otherwise, — not 
by  banding  into  societies  to  debate  and  harangue  on 
social  evils  and  their  redress — shall  we  win  this  high 
honor,  but  by  ruling  in  the  little  realm  of  home,  our 
legitimate  domain,  in  the  spirit  of  wisdom  and  of  love, 
by  cultivating  every  feminine  grace  and  charm  which 
may  secure  for  us  a  wide  social  influence,  and  by  using 
this  influence  to  cemmend  truth  and  holiness,  to  allay 
the  animosities  of  party  and  the  prejudices  of  caste,  and 
to  prore  to  the  world  that  there  is  no  civilization  so  high- 
toned  and  of  such  true  refinement,  as  that  which  is  based 
on  Christian  principles. 


HER  WORK  AND  HER  REWARD.  97 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

THE   WEST. 

THE  United  States  of  America — how  much  is  com- 
prised in  these  few  words !  How  many  varieties  of  life, 
physical  and  spiritual!  Here,  forests  seemingly  inter- 
minable, where  gigantic  trees  clothe  themselves  in  the 
cheerful  livery  of  spring,  the  full  foliage  of  summer,  the 
russet  hues  of  autumn,  or  present  their  leafless  branches 
to  the  tossings  of  the  wintry  tempests,  with  no  human 
eye  to  mark  their  changes,  no  human  voice  to  interrupt 
the  harmony  of  their  feathered  songsters,  and  no  human 
foot  to  startle  the  squirrel  from  his  feast,  or  to  track  to 
his  haunts  the  prowling  wolf  or  savage  bear; — there, 
cities,  which  from  their  artificial  life  and  closely-pressed 
population,  you  might  fancy  coeval  with  the  oldest  of 
the  old  world.  Here,  a  people  who,  cast  upon  rugged 
rocks,  have  become  rugged  as  they,  and  forced  from 
stern  nature  wealth  and  luxury,  making  the  stones  which 

9 


98  WOMAN  IN  AMEEICA  I 

she  gave  them  for  bread,  build  their  houses,  and  com- 
pelling the  streams  which  would  not  float  their  ships  to 
turn  their  mill-wheels ; — there,  a  land  whose  soil  scarce 
needs  the  tillage  of  man  to  bring  forth  all  that  can  charm 
the  eye  or  gratify  the  appetite,  yet  whose  inhabitants 
rarely  obtain  from  it  more  than  the  necessaries  of  exist- 
ence. Here,  a  territory  whose  dwellings  stand  ever 
clustered  around  the  church  and  the  school -house ; — 
there,  a  vast  extent  of  country  over  which  no  Sabbath 
bell  has  ever  sounded,  and  where  no  schoolmaster  has 
yet  gone  abroad.  Yet,  over  this  country,  so  diverse  in 
its  physical  features  and  its  moral  aspect,  there  is  still 
one  bond  of  unity.  All  its  citizens  are  politically  free 
and  independent ;  all  profess  to  be,  in  some  sense — 
though  in  what  sense  few  of  them  perhaps  understand — 
equal.  To  all  of  them,  therefore,  we  may  say,  as  we 
have  said:  "Your  life  must  be  moulded  in  other  and 
simpler  forms  than  that  of  lands  whose  civilization'  was 
the  child  of  feudalism,  not  of  Christianity." 

But  there  are  circumstances  connected  with  these  di- 
versified modes  of  life,  which  must  greatly  modify  the 
forms  in  each.  Permit  us  to  describe  more  minutely  the 
variations  to  "which  each  of  these  modes  of  life  has  al- 
ready given  rise,  the  evils  to  be  dreaded  in  each,  and,  so 


HER  WORK  AND  HER  REWARD.      99 

far  as  our  insight  extends,  the  manner  in  which  those 
evils  may  be  avoided. 

And  first,  of  the  West.  Here  we  have  a  vast  extent 
of  territory,  the  first  danger  of  whose  inhabitants  has 
been  well  defined  by  an  able  writer  of  our  own  land,  to 
be  barbarism,  or  a  loss  both  of  civilization  and  of  Chris- 
tianity. Nor  can  any  doubt  that  there  is  sufficient 
cause  for  this  fear,  who  casts  an  eye  over  this  portion  of 
our  country,  with  its  habitations  scattered  here  and 
there  at  remote  distances,  and  with  no  tie  of  mutual  ad- 
vantage holding  together  the  dwellers  in  those  habita- 
tions, or  binding  them  to  one  common  centre.  In  the 
most  unmitigated  form  of  this  Western  life,  the  single 
habitation  of  the  rude  squatter  or  adventurous  hunter, 
ever  receding  before  the  advance  of  civilization,  the  evil 
is  immedicable  by  any  specific  that  we  can  command. 
But,  here  and  there,  over  those  pathless  prairies,  journeys 
a  group  of  settlers,  leaving  the  smiling  homesteads  where 
their  childhood  and  youth  have  been  passed  in  a  life 
simple  but  not  altogether  rude,  in  search  of  richer  if  not 
happier  fortunes  in  that  far  West  which  is  the  "  land  of 
promise"  to  the  American  of  the  Atlantic  coast.  These 
establish  themselves  on  neighboring  farms,  in  rude  huts, 
in  which  they  live  perchance  for  years,  estranged  from 


100  WOMAN  m  AMEKICA  : 

all  the  customs  and  the  comforts  of  their  earlier  life. 
No  Sabbath  bell  reminds  them  that  there  is  a  higher 
nature  within  them  to  whose  necessities  one-seventh 
part  of  their  time  has  been  devoted  by  their  great  Law- 
giver ;  no  ambassador  from  God,  no  messenger  of  the 
glad  tidings  of  salvation,  visits  them  in  their  comfortless 
abodes.  Even  the  intellectual  powers  that  fit  them  for 
the  more  successful  pursuit  of  worldly  objects,  find  there 
no  means  of  cultivation — for  no  school-house  rises  within 
any  convenient  distance  of  their  homes.  The  present, 
with  its  stern  demands,  which  will  brook  no  delay, 
presses  away  the  memories  of  a  former  and  happier  life, 
and  drowns  by  its  clamors  the  still,  small  voice  which 
would  urge  the  claims  of  the  future.  They  eat  and 
drink  and  perish,  with  little  but  those  fading  memories 
to  mark  them  as  nobler  than  the  brutes ;  and  they  leave 
their  children  to  a  life  in  which  those  memories  have 
already  assumed  the  less  influential  character  of  tradi- 
tions. 

Permit  us  to  pause  here  for  a  moment  with  a  sugges- 
tion which  has  often  forced  itself  upon  our  hearts,  while 
contemplating  the  condition  of  these  our  countrymen  and 
countrywomen.  It  is  this :  how  can  any  American  seek 
his  field  of  missionary  labor  in  the  distant  isles  of  the 


HER  WORK  AND  HEE  EEWAED.  101 

Pacific,  in  India,  or  China,  or  Africa,  and  leave  thus, 
within  the  borders  of  his  own  land,  a  people  speaking 
his  own  language,  claiming  a  common  parentage  with 
himself,  "  bone  of  his  bone  and  flesh  of  his  flesh,"  to  lose 
the  light  of  the  gospel,  and  sink  back  into  darkness  as 
deep  as  that  of  any  Pagan  land?  True,  from  those 
distant  parts  of  the  earth  voices  are  crying  out  to  us  in 
tones  well  nigh  irresistible  for  the  bread  of  life;  nor 
would  we  resist  the  appeal — if  we  are  Christians  we 
dare  not,  for  our  work,  if  we  are  followers  of  Christ,  is 
what  his  was,  the  salvation  of  the  whole  world.  But 
while  we  do  this,  let  us  take  heed  that  we  leave  not  the 
other  undone — that  the  neighbor  at  our  door — the  duty 
nearest  us — be  not  overlooked !  Ah !  will  not  Eng- 
land and  America  learn,  that  to  them,  as  to  Israel  of  old, 
it  is  commanded,  ere  they  go  forth  to  do  battle  against 
the  enemies  of  the  Lord,  and  to  overthrow  the  false  gods 
of  the  Heathen,  to  "put  away"  from  themselves  "every 
wicked  thinff."  Let  us  educate  and  Christianize  our  own 

O 

people,  that  we  may  go  forth  with  resistless  power,  even 
with  the  power  of  the  Most  High,  to  bring  the  whole 
earth  into  subjection  to  the  truth  which  we  have  thus 
acknowledged  and  obeyed. 

But  this  is  a  subject  which  may  be  thought  somewhat 

9* 

.»_ 


102  WOMAN  IN  AMERICA  I 

apart  from  our  present  design,  and  too  high  for  our  fee- 
ble pens ;  we  turn,  therefore,  again  to  our  own  sex, 
and  to  the  more  common  forms  of  life.  And  even  here, 
in  these  western  wilds,  woman — and  woman  in  the  exer- 
cise only  of  her  acknowledged  powers,  in  the  fulfilment 
of  the  sweet  charities  of  home,  as  wife,  mother,  mistress 
— may  do  much  to  promote  the  advance  of  Christian 
civilization. 

Not  unfrequently  the  rude  settlement  formed  by  some 
band  of  Eastern  emigrants,  whose  whole  capital  could 
do  little  more  than  purchase  the  land  on  which  they  built 
their  huts,  has  been  made  in  a  spot  possessing  such  ad- 
vantages of  position  as  to  tempt  others,  with  somewhat 
more  capital,  to  plant  their  habitations  near  them.  The 
unsuccessful  merchant,  and  the  professional  man  of  expen- 
sive habits,  who,  having  married  early,  finds  his  family 
increasing  more  rapidly  than  the  means  of  supporting 
them  in  a  land  in  which  his  class  is  already  too  numerous, 
look  longingly  to  the  West,  where  they  may,  without  the 
humiliation  of  a  descent  in  the  social  scale,  assume  a 
mode  of  life  more  simple  and  better  suited  to  their  re- 
duced incomes.  Too  often,  we  grieve  to  say  it,  the 
consent  of  the  wife  to  this  removal  is  an  enforced  consent 
— and  even  where  it  is  otherwise,  where  it  is  given  from 


HER  WOEK  AXD  HEK  REWARD.     103 

an  intelligent  conviction  of  the  wisdom  of  such  a  measure, 
and  a  profound  sympathy  with  the  disappointments  and 
the  hopes  of  her  husband,  there  is  often,  we  fear,  no 
consciousness  of  any  duty  on  her  part  but  endurance, 
cheerful  as  she  can  make  it,  of  what  she  regards  as 
the  inevitable  evils  of  her  lot.  Alas!  she  has  yet  to 
learn  that,  "  to  be  still,  sometimes  demands  immeasurably- 
higher  power  than  to  act."  It  is  only  while  we  are  ac- 
tively engaged  in  efforts  to  meliorate  suffering  and  to 
overcome  evil,  whether  physical  or  moral,  that  we  can 
cheerfully  endure  its  presence.  Let  every  Christian 
woman  thus  borne  westward  by  influences  over  which  she 
has  no  control,  recognise  in  these  influences  the  hand  of 
Providence,  and  ask  herself,  What  work  has  God  here 
for  me  ?  and  we  shall  have  fewer  instances  of  families 
driven  back,  through  the  discontent  of  the  wife  and 
mother,  from  the  abodes  which  were  just  beginning  to 
assume  something  of  the  aspect  of  homes,  and  from  the 
property  just  beginning  to  repay  the  first  expense  of  its 
settlement  and  the  cares  lavished  upon  it,  wisely,  but 
vainly.  She  comes — the  unhappy  wife — with  her  beauty 
faded  by  unaccustomed  labor  and  privation,  and  the 
buoyancy  of  her  spirit  broken,  and  the  serenity  of  her 
temper  clouded  by  many  cares ;  and  the  world,  that 


104  WOMAN  ET  AMERICA I 

wise  judge,  exclaims — "  How  cruel  it  is,  to  take  a  woman 
of  refinement,  who  has  been  accustomed  to  all  the  com- 
forts of  civilized  life,  to  {-he  West !" 

Sad  sentence,  this,  if  it  be  a  true  one,  for  it  condemns 
that  fair  and  fertile  region,  whose  wide  extent  and  rich 
resources  give  promise  of  power  and  wealth  greater  than 
those  of  all  the  rest  of  our  confederacy,  to  the  loss  of 
those  influences  which  will  most  successfully  combat  its 
present  tendency  to  barbarism.  While  political  econo- 
mists are  arguing  on  the  danger  to  our  institutions  of  the 
rapid  increase  of  a  foreign  population  in  our  land,  and 
statesmen  are  planning  checks  and  balances  to  this  evil, 
the  resistless  flood  is  still  rolling  Westward — the  roaring 
of  its  mighty  wave  breaking  the  silence  of  the  prairies, 
over  which  for  ages  only  the  Indian  moved  with  stealthy 
step,  while  the  very  winds  seemed  there  to  hush  them- 
selves to  softer  whisperings.  There,  Europe  is  pouring 
out  her  pent-up  thousands.  The  overwrought  children 
of  toil  from  England  and  Scotland — the  starving  peasant- 
ry of  Ireland,  with  then-  quick  wit,  and  wild,  reckless 
impulses — the  Swiss,  the  German,  the  Dane,  the  Swede — 
all  are  there  waiting  the  influences  which  are  to  fashion 
them  into  a  terrible  engine  of  destruction  to  a  government 
which  can  rest  securely  only  on  the  intelligence  and  virtue 


HER  WORK  AND  HER  REWARD.     105 

of  its  people,  or  to  mould  them  into  the  choicest  pillars 
of  our  Temple  of  Freedom.  And  shall  we  lightly  reject 
in  such  a  work  the  silent,  but  most  powerful,  influence  of 
woman?  Shall  she,  who  might  soften  the  rude,  and 
tame  the  fierce,  and  harmonize  the  discordant  elements 
of  character,  be  forbidden  to  approach  them?  Rather 
let  us  rejoice  to  see  our  noblest  and  our  best  bending 
-their  steps  thitherward,  if  they  have  minds  to  grasp  the 
work  that  lies  before  them,  physical  powers  to  endure  its 
demands,  and  hearts  to  give  themselves  to  a  noble  cause 
in  self-denying  effort.  All  these  will,  we  doubt  not,  be 
needed ;  therefore,  let  no  woman,  without  counting  the 
cost,  consent  to  undertake  this  mission,  for  a  sacred  mis- 
sion it  must  be  to  her.  Before  she  enters  on  it,  let  her 
be  assured  that  she  has  the  true  refinement  which  can 
sustain  itself  unharmed  in  the  simplest  life;  an  innate 
dignity  which,  dispensing  with  all  the  shows  and  trap- 
pings of  a  vain  and  selfish  luxury,  may  still  be  intact  in 
its  essential  grace.  Fatigue  she  must  doubtless  endure, 
arid  therefore  the  need  of  physical  vigor.  To  these  at- 
tributes, she  will  require  to  add  such  a  knowledge  of  all 
household  economy,  as  shall  make  her  not  absolutely 
dependent  upon  hired  services  for  the  comforts  of  her 
home. 


106  WOMAN  IN  AMERICA: 

"  Not  dependent  upon  hired  services !  What !  would 
you  have  j,  lady  cook  and  wash  ?" — me  thinks  we  hear 
some  astonished  reader  exclaim.  Certainly  not,  we  reply, 
if  she  can  avoid  it ;  but  we  would  have  her  know  how  to 
perform  even  these  offices  if  necessary  ;  for  we  contend  it 
is  better  to  cook  a  dinner  than  to  want  one,  and  better, 
and  more  lady -like  even,  to  wash  our  own  clothing,  than 
to  wear  it  unclean.  The  last  is  a  labor,  however,  which 
requires  the  strength  of  practised  muscles,  and  might  be 
found  impossible  to  unaccustomed  hands,  were  it  not  for 
the  aid  of  those  mechanical  arts,  to  whose  benign  influ- 
ence on  social  life  we  have  already  alluded. 

Let  us  say  to  those  who  hear  with  scorn  of  ladies 
so  engaged,  that  we  have  known,  even  here,  the  fair 
daughter  of  luxury  who  had  been  delicately  reared,  in 
anticipation  of  a  life  that  should  be  as  a  fairy  dream, 
suddenly  driven  from  her  home  of  affluence  to  one  of* 
poverty;  and  never  did  we  so  value  the  accomplish- 
ments which  were  intended  to  give  a  new  charm  to 
the  promise  of  her  earlier  days,  as  when  we  saw  them 
cheering  and  brightening,  not  herself  only,  but  all  who 
dwelt  within  the  shadow  of  her  darkened  life.  Never 
have  we  found  beauty  so  alluring  or  grace  so  winning, 
as  when  we  have  seen  them  employed  in  the  homeliest 


HER  WORK  AND  HER  REWARD.  107 

labors,  and  learned  thus  how  much  they  might  do  to 
win  for  labor  the  respect  which  is  its  due,  and  to  ele- 
vate the  laborer  even  in  his  own  esteem.  Yet,  we  may 
add,  there  would  probably  be  less  necessity  for  the  per- 
formance of  these  labors,  in  their  Western  homes,  by 
those  to  whom  they  are  an  untried  and  therefore  a  for- 
midable exertion,  if  they  would  seek  the  aid  of  their 
neighbors  in  the  wilderness,  in  the  spirit  of  those  who 
ask  an  interchange  of  kindly  offices  from  their  equals, 
rather  than  of  those  who  purchase  the  services  of  their 
inferiors.  Remember,  that  the  unlettered  woman  to 
whom  you  apply  yourself  with  -such  an  air  of  hauteur, 
has  yet  to  learn  the  value  of  that  cultivation  on  which 
you  found  your  claim  to  superiority — that  of  the  accom- 
plishments which  are  your  boast  she  knows  nothing, 
while  she  sees  you  ignorant  of  those  arts  which  are  of 
prime  necessity  in  your  present  life — the  only  life  with 
which  she  is  acquainted.  Can  you  wonder  that  she  is 
slow  to  perceive  and  acknowledge  herself  your  inferior  ? 
Nay,  the  fact  of  superiority  or  inferiority  may  bear  a  de- 
bate from  whatever  point  we  take  our  view,  while  we 
look  only  at  the  relative  accomplishments  and  acquire- 
ments of  the  two  parties.  Yours  we  admire  most,  per- 
haps, but  we  can  live  without  them ;  hers  are  of  prime 


106  WOMAN  IN  AMERICA: 

"  Not  dependent  upon  hired  services !  What !  would 
you  have  j,  lady  cook  and  wash  ?" — methinks  we  hear 
some  astonished  reader  exclaim.  Certainly  not,  we  reply, 
if  she  can  avoid  it ;  but  we  would  have  her  know  how  to 
perform  even  these  offices  if  necessary  ;  for  we  contend  it 
is  better  to  cook  a  dinner  than  to  want  one,  and  better, 
and  more  lady -like  even,  to  wash  our  own  clothing,  than 
to  wear  it  unclean.  The  last  is  a  labor,  however,  which 
requires  the  strength  of  practised  muscles,  and  might  be 
found  impossible  to  unaccustomed  hands,  were  it  not  for 
the  aid  of  those  mechanical  arts,  to  whose  benign  influ- 
ence on  social  life  we  have  already  alluded. 

Let  us  say  to  those  who  hear  with  scorn  of  ladies 
so  engaged,  that  we  have  known,  even  here,  the  fab- 
daughter  of  luxury  who  had  been  delicately  reared,  in 
anticipation  of  a  life  that  should  be  as  a  fairy  dream, 
suddenly  driven  from  her  home  of  affluence  to  one  of* 
poverty;  and  never  did  we  so  value  the  accomplish- 
ments which  were  intended  to  give  a  new  charm  to 
the  promise  of  her  earlier  days,  as  when  we  saw  them 
cheering  and  brightening,  not  herself  only,  but  all  who 
dwelt  within  the  shadow  of  her  darkened  life.  Never 
have  we  found  beauty  so  alluring  or  grace  so  winning, 
as  when  we  have  seen  them  employed  in  the  homeliest 


HER  WORK  AND  HER  REWARD.  107 

labors,  and  learned  thus  how  much  they  might  do  to 
win  for  labor  the  respect  which  is  its  due,  and  to  ele- 
vate the  laborer  even  in  his  own  esteem.  Yet,  we  may 
add,  there  would  probably  be  less  necessity  for  the  per- 
formance of  these  labors,  in  their  Western  homes,  by 
those  to  whom  they  are  an  untried  and  therefore  a  for- 
midable exertion,  if  they  would  seek  the  aid  of  their 
neighbors  in  the  wilderness,  in  the  spirit  of  those  who 
ask  an  interchange  of  kindly  offices  from  their  equals, 
rather  than  of  those  who  purchase  the  services  of  their 
inferiors.  Remember,  that  the  unlettered  woman  to 
whom  you  apply  yourself  with  -such  an  ah-  of  hauteur, 
has  yet  to  learn  the  value  of  that  cultivation  on  which 
you  found  your  claim  to  superiority — that  of  the  accom- 
plishments which  are  your  boast  she  knows  nothing, 
while  she  sees  you  ignorant  of  those  arts  which  are  of 
prime  necessity  in  your  present  life — the  only  life  with 
•which  she  is  acquainted.  Can  you  wonder  that  she  is 
slow  to  perceive  and  acknowledge  herself  your  inferior  ? 
Nay,  the  fact  of  superiority  or  inferiority  may  bear  a  de- 
bate from  whatever  point  we  take  our  view,  while  we 
look  only  at  the  relative  accomplishments  and  acquire- 
ments of  the  two  parties.  Yours  we  admire  most,  per- 
haps, but  we  can  live  without  them ;  hers  are  of  prime 


108  WOMAN  EST  AMEBICA  I 

necessity.  The  true  superiority  of  yours  consists  in  their 
power  to  enlarge  the  boundaries  of  thought  and  feeling 
— to  give  you  sources  of  happiness  elevated  above  all 
the  accidents  of  your  present  condition.  If  they  have 
done  this  for  you,  your  superiority  will  soon  assert  itself, 
and  be  acknowledged  without  any  trouble  on  your  part. 
The  cultivation  which  gives  you  command  of  temper 
under  all  the  trials  of  your  life,  the  accomplishments 
which  communicate  somewhat  of  grace  and  elegance  to 
your  rude  home,  and  which  make  you  courteous  and 
kindly  to  the  untutored  beings  around  you,  cannot  fail  in 
time  to  win  their  respect,  and  even  to  inspire  them  with 
the  desire  to  emulate  in  some  degree  what  they  admire. 
We  can  scarcely  hope,  indeed,  to  excite  this  latter  feel- 
ing in  the  breasts  of  those  who  have  grown  old  in  such 
different  habits.  But  the  sapling  may  yield  to  the  force 
which  will  not  suffice  to  bend  the  stalwart  oak.  The 
young  will  be  there,  whose  quick  affections  and  eager 
faculties  are  so  quickly  won  to  love,  admire,  and  imitate ; 
and  when  you  have  thus  influenced  them,  how  noble 
will  be  your  work — how  great  your  reward !  The 
brightening  aspect  of  the  homes  around  you,  the  purer 
tastes  and  gentler  manners  of  the  dwellers  in  those 
homes  will  be  as  a  perpetual  blessing  to  you.  Do  you 


HER  WORK  AN1>  HER  REWARD.     109 

ask  any  other  reward  ?  You  will  find  it  in  the  increased 
value  of  your  own  home — in  the  conviction  that  you 
may  dwell  in  it  without  fear  of  coarse  and  brutalizing 
associations  for  your  children — that  by  interesting  them 
in  your  own  holy  work,  you  may  even  find  there  more 
fully  than  in  more  advanced  societies  the  proper  stimulus 
for  all  in  them  which  is  "  pure  and  lovely  and  of  good 
report."  And  with  these  "  dearer  and  home-felt  de- 
lights" may  mingle  the  sweet  thought,  that  silently,  un- 
seen, like  the  rill  which  steals  along,  marking  its  course 
only  by  the  verdure  to  which  it  supplies  a  richer  green 
and  more  luxuriant  beauty,  you  have  done  more  real 
good  to  your  country,  more  to  insure  the  continuance  of 
institutions  depending  on  the  intelligence  and  virtue  of 
her  people,  than  all  the  demagogues  who  ever  harangued 
in  or  out  of  Congress. 

10 


110  WOMAN  IN  AMEKICA 


CHAPTER  IX, 

THE  SOUTH. 

THE  South !  the  sunny  South !  The  land  where  the 
snow-spirit  never  comes,  where  the  forest-trees  are 
never  stripped  of  their  green  coronal,  where  Spring 
flings  her  flowers  into  the  very  lap  of  Winter !  Let  us 
stand  beneath  her  soft  skies,  inhale  the  perfume  of  her 
myrtle-bowers  and  orange-groves,  press  her  violet-cov- 
ered turf,  and  weave  fragrant  wreaths  of  the  jessamine 
which  flings  its  yellow  clusters  so  gracefully  from  tree 
to  tree.  Or,  if  you  would  look  on  nature  in  a  soberer 
dress,  we  will  walk  through  her  forests  of  pine,  and  listen 
to  the  whispering  of  the  winds  as  they  pass  over  them ; 
or  we  will  stand  beneath  the  giant  oaks,  from  whose 
branches  a  gray,  mossy  drapery  hangs  waving  in  the 
summer  breeze,  while  the  ocean  wave  breaks  with  a 
lulling  murmur  at  our  feet.  To  eyes  accustomed  to 


HER  WORK  AND  HER  REWARD.     Ill 

bolder  views — to  precipitous  rocks  and  lofty  mountains, 
and  all  the  pleasing  variety  of  hill  and  dale — these  beau- 
ties may  seem  tame,  yet  no  true  lover  of  nature  can  look 
long  without  some  melting  of  the  heart,  upon  that  rich 
and  varied  foliage,  that  flowery  earth,  and  those  ever 
sparkling,  ever  dancing  waters.  Theirs  is  not  the  beauty 
which  strikes  with  sudden,  overpowering  admiration,  but 
they  steal  not  less  surely  to  the  heart ;  and  when,  bruised 
and  worn  with  the  conflicts  of  life,  we  shrink  from  great 
emotions  and  long  only  for  repose,  the  memory  of  their 
peaceful  loveliness  comes  back  on  our  spirits,  with  an  in- 
fluence soothing  as  that  of  the  mother's  smile  which 
lulled  our  infancy  to  rest. 

It  will  be  evident  to  those  acquainted  with  the  physical 
features  of  our  country,  that  we  have  been  describing 
only  the  Atlantic  coast  of  the  Southern  States ;  for  as  we 
advance  into  the  interior,  the  face  of  the  country  becomes 
more  broken,  and  rises  to  greater  elevation,  until,  at  the 
distance  of  less  than  one  hundred  miles  from  the  sea,  the 
Alleghany  rears  its  lofty  summits.  A  noble  country  is 
this  interior — its  aspect  wild  and  picturesque,  its  soil  fer- 
tile, and  its  mineral  wealth  unbounded ;  but  it  is  yet,  like 
the  West,  in  that  state  of  transition  which  offers  few 
distinctive  features  to  the  observers  of  moral  and  social 


112  WOMAN  LN"  AMERICA: 

life.  New  settlers  are  still  migrating  thither  from  the 
North  and  East,  bearing  with  them  the  impressions  and 
habits  of  their  former  homes ;  and  it  will  probably  be 
long  before  they  are  welded  together  in  one  homogeneous 
mass.  But  on  the  Southern  seacoast,  we  have  a  social 
life  which  has  existed  nearly  as  long  as  any  in  our  land, 
and  which  is  marked  by  peculiar  characteristics,  the  re- 
sult of  peculiar  institutions. 

In  sketching  the  circumstances  under  which  the  ear- 
liest settlements  in  these  United  States  were  made,  we 
did  not  allude  to  one  element  introduced  into  Southern 
life,  and  Southern  life  alone.  It  is  one,  in  truth,  which 
we  would  fain  have  avoided  altogether,  for  its  very  name 
has  been  of  late  years  a  signal  for  strife.  But  to  write 
of  the  South  and  say  nothing  of  slave-labor,  were  indeed 
— to  borrow  the  words  of  John  Randolph,  on  another 
subject — "  to  give  the  tragedy  of  Hamlet,  with  the  part 
of  Hamlet  omitted ;"  for  from  this  domestic  institution 
does  the  South  derive  many  of  those  traits  which  have 
given  her  a  distinctive  character,  and  assigned  to  her  a 
distinctive  part  in  the  great  drama  acting  in  this  land. 
We  have  seen  that  in  every  part  of  our  country  the  pros- 
perity of  the  colonists  began  only  when  they  threw  off 
their  dependence  on  their  foreign  patrons ;  but  ere  this 


HEE  WOEK  AND  HEE  EEWAED.  113 

had  been  done,  those  patrons  had,  in  some  instances, 
accomplished  plans  whose  influence,  for  good  or  for  evil, 
is  still  felt  by  us.  Such  was  the  act  introducing  African 
laborers,  as  slaves,  into  the  Southern  colonies.  Vainly 
did  the  colonists  protest  against  this  act — vainly  seek  its 
annulment  by  the  Board  of  Directors  hi  England.  Wise 
men  were  those  who  formed  that  board  !  Did  the  future 
unroll  itself  before  their  wondering  eyes  ?  Did  they  see, 
far  down  the  tide  of  time,  those  feeble  colonies  become  a 
great  nation,  no  longer  bringing  tribute  to  England,  or 
accepting  laws  from  her ;  and  did  a  mocking  laugh  rise 
to  their  lips  as  they  heard  their  own  sons — the  sons  of 
those  by  whose  command,  if  not  by  whose  very  hands, 
the  African^vas  brought  to  America,  and  condemned  to 
his  life-bondage — the  sons  of  those  either  in  England  or 
in  New  England  who  received  all  the  gain  of  this  infa- 
mous traffic,  branding  as  men-stealers  the  children  of  the 
very  men  now  petitioning  to  be  delivered  from  the  incu- 
bus of  slavery  ?  Strange  things  must  the  angels  see  in 
this  our  world  !  But  we  are  nearing  the  abyss  of  strife 
— we  feel  its  hot  fires  burning  on  our  brow  and  kindling 
a  flame  in  our  heart,  and  we  gladly  turn  from  the  acts  of 
men,  inconsistent,  vacillating,  and  unjust,  to  those  of  the 
all-perfect  One,  "with  whom  is  no  variableness  nor 
10* 


114  WOMAN  IN  AMEEICA : 

shadow  of  turning ;"  and  we  think  it  will  not  be  difficult 
to  prove  from  the  annals  of  African  slavery  in  this  land, 
that  He  has  made  the  wrath  of  man  to  praise  Him — 
transmuting,  with  heavenly  alchemy,  the  loathsome  self- 
ishness and  heartlessness  of  the  slave-trader  into  the 
partial  civilization  and  Christianization  of  the  race  en- 
slaved, and  into  the  means  of  promoting  the  intellectual 
culture  and  social  refinement  of  those  who  were  forced 
into  the  position  of  their  masters. 

The  improvement  of  the  African  race  among  us  is 
sufficiently  attested  by  the  contrast  which  even  the  slaves 
in  our  Southern  States  present,  to  the  specimens  of  the 
same  race  occasionally  recaptured  from  some  slave-ship 

and  brought  to  our  shores,  some  forty  or  fifty  years  ago. 

vt 

And  now,  yearly,  many  of  this  oppressed  and  much- 
wronged  people  are  returning  to  their  own  land,  bearing 
with  them  the  seeds  of  all  that  has  made  us  what  we  are. 
They  went  forth  weeping,  and  they  return  bearing  pre- 
cious sheaves.  The  foul  spirits  which  haunted  the  shores 

of  Africa  have  been  exorcised ;    Christian  temples  are 

• 
rising  there,  and  around  those  temples  are  clustered  the 

habitations  of  civilized  men, ,  from  which  the  voice  of 
prayer  and  praise  ascends  to  Heaven  like  the  evening 
and  the  morning  incense. 


HER  WORK  AND  HER  REWARD.     115 

In  proof  of  our  second  proposition,  that  the  introduc- 
tion of  slavery  into  the  United  States  had  been  made  to 
subserve  the  promotion  of  intellectual  culture  and  social 
refinement  among  ourselves,  we  will  refer  the  reader  to  a 
work  by  one  who  cannot  be  suspected  of  favoring  slavery 
— Dr.  Bushnell,  of  Hartford.  The  argument  to  which 
we  allude  is  contained  in  a  sermon,  published  by  him 
some  months  since,  entitled,  "  Barbarism  our  first  dan- 
ger." He  there  asserts  that,  in  colonization,  the  colony 
must  always  retrograde  from  the  civilization  of  the 
parent-land,  since  little  time  can  be  spared  for  the  refine- 
ments of  iife,  by  those  who  are  engaged  in  a  hand-to- 
hand  contest  with  nature  for  the  indispensable  requisites 
of  existence.  From  the  action  of  this  law,  however,  he 
confesses  that  those  colonies  in  our  land  into  which  slave- 
labor  was  introduced,  were  comparatively  free.  There, 
the  owner  of  property,  having  his  land  tilled  by  other 
hands,  had  leisure  for  the  cultivation  of  his  mind,  and 
the  practice  of  all  the  gentle  courtesies  of  life.  His 
gains,  too,  were  immediate,  and  he  was  thus  able  to 
command  the  means  of  sending  his  sons  to  England  for 
their  education,  while  the  youth  of  other  portions  of  our 
land  were  educated  at  native  schools  and  by  native 
teachers.  Was  not  the  great  prominence  of  our  South- 


118  WOMAN  IN  AMERICA  : 

should  the  gentle  care  of  woman  not  be  withdrawn  from 
the  home  of  the  slave.  She  should  be  there  to  interpose 
the  shield  of  her  charity  between  the  weak  and  the  strong, 
to  watch  beside  the  sick,  to  soothe  the  sorrowing,  to  teach 
the  ignorant,  to  soften  by  her  influence  the  haughty  mas- 
ter, and  to  elevate  the  debased  slave.  We  know  that  there 
are  women — women  in  the  often  misrepresented  South, 
who  have  lived  and  do  live  for  such  objects.  They  will 
have  their  reward ;  their  names  may  be  cast  out  as  evil  in 
the  world,  but  "  they  shall  be  found  written  in  the  Lamb's 
book  of  life."  Such  should  be  the  life  of  eveiy  Southern 
woman.  She  is  a  missionary  to  whose  own  door  God 
lias  brought  the  Pagans  to  be  instructed.  Ah  !  could 
she  but  understand  all  her  mission,  could  she  possess  her 
soul  in  patience  in  the  midst  of  the  warring  elements 
which  surround  her — could  she  pour  the  oil  of  her  own 
loving  and  gentle  thoughts  upon  the  raging  waters  of 
strife,  winning  the  fiery  natures  around  her  to  see  the 
good  even  in  their  enemies,  to  adopt  wise  counsel  even 
though  it  come  mingled  with  bitter  taunt,  to  foster  the 
rare  magnanimity  which  will  not  be  withheld  from  a 
right  action  by  the  apprehension  that  a  foe  may  regard 
it  as  a  concession — could  she  induce,  or  even  strive  to  in- 
duce them  to  do  all  this — exercising  her  influence,  not  by 


HER  WORK  AND  HER  REWARD.  119 

public  associations,  and  debates,  and  petitions,  but  in  the 
manifestation  of  all  feminine  grace,  and  all  womanly  deli- 
cacy— she  would  prove  herself  indeed,  what  one  of  old 
named  her,  the  connecting  link  between  man  and  the 
angelic  world. 

On  Southern  plantations  the  houses  are  generally  of 
wood,  large  and  commodious,  but  built  with  little  regard 
to  elegance,  and  furnished  with  a  simplicity  which  would 
shock  the  eye  of  a  third-rate  votary  of  fashion  in  a 
Northern  city.  In  these  simple  homes,  however,  you 
may  enter  without  fear;  "stranger"  is  there  a  sacred 
name ;  and  you  will  fin'S  youself  entertained  with  an 
open-hearted  hospitah'ty  which  may  well  reconcile  you 
to  the  absence  of  some  accustomed  luxuries.  In  the 
dwellers  in  these  homes,  you  will  find  generally  the  easy, 
courteous  bearing  which  distinguishes  the  best  society 
everywhere.  In  them,  too,  you  will  often  find  the  high- 
est intelligence  in  the  land ;  and  it  will  be  readily  per- 
ceived, that  the  result  of  this  attainment  of  high  cultiva- 
tion in  the  inartificial  life  of  the  country,  must  be  the 
formation  of  a  character  uniting,  in  a  rare  degree,  refine- 
ment and  simplicity.  To  this  union,  we  think,  Southern 
women  are  indebted  for  that  charm  so  generally  at- 
tributed to  their  manner — a  charm  which  is  never  felt 


120  WOMAN  IN  AMERICA  : 

so  fully  as  in  their  own  homes,  where  all  around  them 
wears  the  impress  of  their  own  spirits.  In  the  life  they 
lead,  there  is  little  of  moment  but  personal  qualities. 
The  fact  that  the  changes  of  property  are  less  'frequent 
and  violent  in  an  agricultural  than  in  a  commercial 
country — that  families  remain  longer  in  their  relative 
positions  in  the  first  than  in  the  last — has  given,  it  is 
true,  a  higher  value  to  blood, — to  family  distinction, — 
at  the  South  than  at  the  North,  yet  scarcely  sufficient 
to  affect  the  reception  of  an  individual  in  society.  The 
true  gold  of  character  will  there  pass  current,  even 
though  it  may  lack  "the  guinea  stamp." 

Yet,  even  in  this  life,  simple,  unostentatious  as  it  is,  we 
find  some  vestiges  of  the  old  feudalism.  One  of  these 
vestiges  we  recognise  in  the  universal  contempt  for  labor 
— not  perhaps  in  itself  considered,  but  as  pursued  for  gain. 
A  GENTLEMAN  may  labor,  he  may  be  his  own  blacksmith 
or  carpenter,  if  such  be  his  taste,  but  he  must  make  it  evi- 
dent that  it  is  his  taste — that  he  has  no  ulterior  design  to 
profit  by  his  labors — if  he  would  not  lose  caste.  Were 
this  prejudice  entertained  only  against  such  rude  employ- 
ments as  we  have  named,  however,  we  could  scarcely 
represent  it  as  characteristic  of  the  South.  The  hard- 
handed  mechanic,  however  intelligent  and  even  polite,  is 


HER  WOEK  AND  TTEK  REWARD.  121 

as  completely  shut  out  from  the  pale  of  good  society 
everywhere ;  but  at  the  South,  even  the  merchant  finds 
himself  somewhat  slightly  regarded,  because  engaged  in 
a  money-getting  occupation.  This  has  doubtless  been 
the  result  of  that  severance  of  the  natural  connection  be- 
tween property  and  labor  which  has  obtained  at  the 
South,  and  in  which  lies  the  very  essence  of  feudalism. 
Through  this,  the  association  of  otium  cum  dignitate 
was  established  and  has  been  perpetuated- at  the  South. 
Through  this,  the  military  profession  has  been  honored 
there,  even  as  in  European  countries  in  old  feudal  times. 
Next  in  dignity  stands  the  legal  profession,  the  great 
nursery  of  statesmen  in  our  land ;  then  the  clerical  and 
medicaj  professions;  while  the  life  of  elegant  leisure 
which  the  resources  of  a  few  enable  them  to  lead,  is  re- 
garded as  equal  or  superior  to  any  of  these  in  the  social 
pooition  it  confers. 

In  the  Northern  and  Middle  States,  an  idle  man  seems 
in  an  awkward  position,  as  the  world  of  his  acquaintance 
is  hurrying  by  him  ;  he  must  assume  a  bustling  manner, 
that  he  may,  at  least,  seem  to  be  employed.  At  the 
South,  he  stands  in  an  attitude  of  graceful  repose,  and 
looks  with  conscious  superiority  upon  the  workers  around 
him.  But  this  state  of  things  cannot  endure.  Every 
11 


122  WOMAN  IN  AMEEICA  I 

day,  and  in  every  place,  the  conviction  is  becoming  more 
decided,  that  this  is  a  working  world.  There  is  work 
here  for  each  and  all,  and  he  who  does  not  his  own 
share,  makes  his  brother's  burden  by  so  much  the 
heavier.  Work  !  though  it  be  only  to  improve  your  own 
land ;  and  if  you  work  successfully,  the  world  has  be- 
come so  much  richer  by  your  labors.  Especially  in  a 
country  professedly  republican,  can  no  wise  or  conscien- 
tious man  retnain  an  idler.  Do  you  really  Value  your 
country,  her  freedom,  her  intelligence?  Awake,  slug- 
gard !  lift  up  your  eyes,  and  see  how  the  darkness  from 
other  lands  is  overshadowing  her  intelligence — how  the 
oppressed  multitudes  of  other  nations,  escaping  from  their 
galling  bonds,  threaten,  in  their  wild  transports,  t/p  tram- 
ple freedom  under  foot,  and  to  introduce  in  her  place  the 
anarchy  which  has  ever  ended,  and  must  ever  end  in 
despotism.  Here  are  the  ignorant  to  be  taught,  the 
weak  to  be  guided,  the  vicious  to  be  reclaimed.  Up, 
then,  and  be  doing  ! — while  a  school  or  a  church  is 
needed  in  the  remotest  district,  you  have  something  for 
which  to  labor.  We  feel  persuaded  that  even  in  the 
South,  the  listless  repose  of  the  idle  will  not  long  con- 
tinue undisturbed.  Changes  have  already  taken  place 
there  which  betoken  the  infusion  of  new  elements  into  its 


HEE  WORK  AND  HER  REWARD.  123 

indolent  poco-curante  life.  These  elements  are,  we  be-. 
lieve,  the  overflowing  of  the  ever-boiling  and  bubbling 
caldron  of  life  in  the  New  England  and  Middle  States. 
A  happy  admixture  will  this  be,  if  the  South  will  receive 
strength  and  activity,  and  give  refinement,  without  suffer- 
ing simplicity  to  be  lost  in  the  exchange. 

Changes,  we  repeat,  have  already  taken  place  at  the 
South.  Manufactories  have  been  erected  there,  mines 
have  been  worked,  and  railroads  opened,  in  almost  every 
available  direction.  Should  the  prejudice  against  labor 
continue  in  its  full  force  at  the  South,  these  newly- 
opened  sources  of  wealth  must  fall  into  the  hands  of  the 
strangers  who  first  found  the  key  to  them,  and  the  old 
proprietors  be  overshadowed  till  they  die  out  of  the*  soil 
which  gave  them  birth.  But  of  this  we  have  little  fear. 
We  do  not  think  that  any  part  of  our  country  can  much 
longer  remain  unenlightened  on  the  beneficence,  the  true 
nobleness  of  labor,  nay,  of  labor  for  money,  since  in 
money  lies  the  germ  of  all  the  good  we  may  dp,  as  well 
as  of  that  we  may  enjoy.  We  will  suppose  all  error  on 
this  subject  to  have  been  rectified,  and  Southern  society 
to  have  become  an  industrious,  active,  energetic,  money- 
getting  society.  Then  arises  another,  and,  to  us,  not  less 
interesting  question.  Will  it,  in  acquiring  the  virtues  of 


124  WOMAN  IK  AMEEICA  : 

the  North,  retain  its  own?  Will  its  members,  while 
adding  to  their  homes  the  mechanical  improvements 
which  minister  to  comfort,  and  the  treasures  of  art 
which  at  once  form  and  gratify  the  taste — while  thus 
gaining  all  that  is  truly  valuable  in  the  most  advanced 
.  civilization,  still  wisely  refuse  to. exchange  their  simple, 
social  habits  for  the  ostentatious  display  and  vulgar 
pretension  which  too  often  mark  a  sudden  increase  of 
wealth  ?  If  they  do,  if  maintaining  their  simplicity  of 
life,  they  awake  to  a  sense  of  their  responsibility  to  God 
and  to  the  world  for  the  improvement  and  proper  use  of 
every  talent  entrusted  to  them,  if  they  become  "  workers 
with  God,"  seeking  wealth, 

:*?'*> 

"  Not  for  to  hide  it  in  a  hedge, 
Nor  for  a  train  attendant — 
But  for  the  glorious  privilege" 

of  opening  to  others  a  nobler  life,  of  elevating  to  the 
dignity  of  men  their  own  dependants,  of  sending  the 
purifying  streams  of  Christian  education  through  the 
land — that,  each  man  learning  he  is  the  brother  of  all, 
the  bitter  prejudices  of  sect  and  party  may  be  discarded, 
and  our  country,  our  whole  country,  become  what  God 
intended  it  to  be,  united  in  one  spirit,  as  well  as  in  one 


IIEK  WORK  AND  HER  REWARD.  125 

body  :  if  they  do  all  this,  then  will  they  have  attained  to 
our  conception  of  a  true  American  life. 

And  has  woman  at  the  South  nothing  to  do  in  pro- 
moting this  "  consummation  most  devoutly  to  be  wished  ?" 
It  must  be  mainly  her  work.  Let  her  place  it  before  her 
as  an  object  of  her  life.  Let  her  improve  every  gift  and 
cultivate  every  grace,  that  the  increased  influence  thus 
obtained  may  aid  in  its  accomplishment.  Let  her  light 
so  shine  that  it  may  enlighten  all  who  come  within  her 
sphere.  Let  her  be  a  teacher  of  the  ignorant,  a  guide  to 
the  straying  of  her  own  household.  Let  her  make  it  a 
law  of  the  social  life  in  which  she  rules,  that  nothing  so 
surely  degrades  a  man  as  idleness,  and  the  vices  to  which 
it  almost  inevitably  leads.  Thus  will  she  proclaim  the 
dignity  and  worth  of  labor,  and  she  will  find  her  reward 
in  the  new  impress  made  on  the  yet  ductile  minds  of  her 
children.  She  has  seen  them  hitherto  too  often  go  forth 
like  bright  but  wandering  stars,  into  a  life  containing  for 
them  no  definite  object.  In  this  vast  void,  she  has  seen 
them  too  often  driven  hither  and  thither  by  their  own 
reckless  impulses ;  and  her  heart  has  been  wrung,  and 
her  imploring  cry  has  arisen  to  Heaven  for  God's  re- 
straining grace,  as  they  have  seemed  about  to  rush  into 
the  unfathomable  realm  of  night.  With  almost  Spartan 
11* 


126  WOMAN  IN  AMEBICA  I 

heroism  she  has  offered  her  "  Te  Deums,"  as  again  and 

again  the  sound  has  come  up  to  her  from  the  battle-field 

'    9* 
of  life — "Mother!  all  is  lost,  but  honor!"     But  labor 

•will  tame  these  wild  impulses — will  give  to  life  a  decided 
aim ;  and,  as  the  strong  hand,  loosed  from  the  bonds  of 
prejudice,  obeys  the  command  of  the  stout  heart,  her 
"  paeans"  will  be  sounded,  not  for  defeat  nobly  sustained, 
but  for  victory  won.  We  have  placed  before  her,  her 
work  and  her  reward. 


HEE  WORK  AND  HER  REWARD.  127 


CHAPTER  X, 

THE  NORTH-EASTERN  AND  MIDDLE  STATES. 

FROM  the  boundless  prairie  and  the  pathless  forest  of 
the  West,  with  all  their  sublime  associations,  their  touch- 
ing reminiscences  of  an  empire  past,  their  grand  promise 
of  a  nobler  empire  yet  to  come ; — from  the  South,  with 
its  quiet  loveliness  of  broad  rivers,  flowing  with  gentle 
noiseless  current  through  valleys  clothed  with  all  the 
exuberance  of  vegetation  common  to  those  lands  which 
lie  nearest  the  sun; — from  the  rude  strength  of  the 
one  and  the  refined  simplicity  of  the  other, — from  these 
pictures  of  life  so  different,  and  each  so  complete  in  itself, 
we  turn  to  the  North  and  East,  and  for  a  time  all  before 
us  seems  a  great  kaleidoscope  of  ever-shifting  forms  and 
colors,  without  plan  or  definite  arrangement.  Bustling 
crowds  are  moving  hither  and  thither  across  the  area  of 
our  vision,  jostling  and  even  trampling  each  other ;  but 
by  what  spirit  are  they  impelled  ? — what  object  are  they 
pursuing  ? — to  what  bourne  are  they  speeding  ? 


128  WOMAN  EST  AMEKICA : 

The  rapid  variations  of  fortune  resulting  from  com- 
mercial enterprise,  have  a  tendency  to  engender  feverish 
dreams  and  wild  speculations.  Life,  under  such  circum- 
stances, becomes  a  great  game  of  chance.  Men  move 
through  its  shifting  scenes  with  knitted  brows,  and  throb- 
bing pulses,  and  anxious  hearts,  like  those  who  feel  that 
the  next  throw  of  the  dice,  or  turn  of  the  wheel  of  for- 
tune may  place  them  at  the  summit  on  which  all  eyes 
are  fastened,  and  to  which  all  efforts  are  straining,  or 
may  cast  them  down  to  the  very  foot  of  that  eminence 
up  which  they  have  been  toiling  for  weary  years.  And 
it  is  by  this  spirit — the  anxious,  self-absorbed  spirit  of 
the  gamester — that  the  movements  of  most  men  here 
are  impelled.  We  say,  of  most  men,  for  we  believe 
there  are  few  comparatively  who  hold  themselves  aloof 
from  mercantile  speculation  in  some  of  its  forms.  The 
lawyer,  the  physician,  and  even  the  divine,  if  we  mistake  ' 
not,  has  often  the  product  of  years  of  labor  placed,  not 
where,  guarded  with  unquestionable  security,  it  may 
bring  to  him  a  moderate  interest,  but  in  some  popular 
stock,  or  surprisingly  lucrative  business,  where,  at  some 
acknowledged  hazard,  it  promises  to  double,  or  treble,  or 
quadruple  itself  in  an  incredibly  short  time. 

And  what  is  the  object  pursued,  with  such  ard&r  ?     Is 


HER  WORK  AND  HER  REWARD.     129 

it  gold  alone  ?  Are  these  men  indeed  so  sordid  that 
they  are  willing  to  bury  all  the  nobler  parts  of  their 
nature  in  shining  dust  ?  No  ;  gold  is  not  their  ultimate 
object.  Gold  is  but  the  representative  of  that  distinc- 
tion which  man  everywhere  craves,  and  which  under  our 
present  social  arrangements  can  be  obtained  ordinarily 
only  through  wealth. 

The  tone  of  feeling  which  prevails  in  the  New  England 
and  Middle  states,  in  regard  to  labor,  seems  more  de- 
cidedly American  than  we  have  found  it  elsewhere. 
The  idler  is  viewed  with  little  respect.  Each  man  has, 
or  seeks  to  have,  a  work  to  do — at  least  the  exceptions 
to  this  remark  are  so  few,  that  they  serve,  by  the  obser- 
vation they  excite,  to  prove  the  rule.  Yet  it  is  here  that 
the  influence  of  the  old  feudal  life  is  most  powerfully 
manifested — here  that  the  most  slavish  subjection  to 
European  customs  is  found.  "You  talk  of  despotism 
abroad,"  said  an  intelligent  foreigner  to  a  friend,  after  a 
residence  of  a  few  months  in  this  part  of  our  country; 
"there  is  no  despotism  like  that  of  fashion  in  America." 
Having  adopted  foreign  lawgivers,  we  seem  to  have  re- 
tained no  discretionary  power  over  their  edicts.  Did  this 
affect  only  our  outer  life — the  form  of  our  dresses  and  our 
furniture,  our  style  of.  architecture  and  our  carriages — we 


130  WOMAN  IN  AMEKICA  : 

should  say  nothing,  unless  indeed  we  adverted  to  it  to 
express  our  thanks  to  those  who,  by  the  exercise  of  their 
powers  on  these  necessary  yet  not  very  important  ar- 
rangements of  social  life,  had  left  ours  free  for  other  and 
higher  objects.  But  this  is  not  all.  Not  a  folly,  or  even 
a  vice,  is  tolerated  abroad,  in  what  are  called  the  higher 
circles,  but  it  finds"  apologists  and  imitators  here.  He 
who  has  spent  years  enough  abroad  to  divest  himself  of 
all  that  Avas  American  about  him — who  returns  hither 
only  because  his  exhausted  finances  Avill  not  support  his 
extravagances  in  other  lands — becomes  at  once  "  the 
glass  of  fashion  and  the  mould  of  form."  Our  good 
plain  English,  the  language  suiting  men  of  sound  prac- 
tical minds  and  true  feeling,  is  exchanged  for  a  jargon  of 
various  tongues,  and  American  wives  and  daughters 
grow  ashamed  in  his  presence,  of  then-  power  to  make 
home  comfortable  as  well  as  gay,  ashamed  of  all  which 
makes  their  true  glory  and  excellence.  The  result  of 
this  is  often  a  compromise,  awkward  and  inharmonious 
as  compromises  ordinarily  are,  between  the  American 
characteristics  early  acquired,  and  the  foreign  graces 
grafted  upon  them.  It  cannot,  we  hope,  be  supposed 
for  a  moment,  that  we  are  so  illiberal,  so  ignorant,  and 
unjust,  as  to  stigmatize  all  which  is  foreign  as  evil.  There 


HER  WORK  AND  HER  REWARD.     131 

is  one  even  now  amongst  us,  who  has  taught  us  that 
home,  with  its  cares  and  its  joys,  is  in  Sweden,  as  in 
America,  the  sanctuary  of  true  and  warm  affections,  the 
nursery  of  pure  and  high  thoughts.  But  let  it  be  re- 
membered that  we  do  not  obtain  the  better  aspects  of 
social  life  abroad — not  the  home-life — from  the  sources 
to  which  Ave  have  alluded — and  while  there  is  not  a  nation 
in  Europe  from  which  we  would  not  gladly  receive 
lessons — not  one  which  we  would  not  be  proud  to  re- 
semble in  some  of  its  characteristics — we  would  still 
preserve  an  independent  mind,  free  to  try  all,  to  judge 
all,  and  to  hold  fast  only  that  which  is  good.  We  would 
take  an  intelligent  view  of  our  own  position,  and  of  the 
objects  for  which  we  exist  as  a  separate  people,  and  we 
would  adopt  nothing  which  would  unfit  us  for  that  posi- 
tion, or  shackle  us  in  the  attainment  of  those  objects. 

We  have  been  accustomed  to  speak  of  that  nation  as 
having  attained  to  the  highest  civilization,  in  which  the 
greatest  advance  had  been  made  in  the  cultivation  of  and 
provision  for  the  physical  nature,  though  the  advantages 
thus  gained  were  enjoyed  only  by  a  few.  But  this  is  a 
civilization  to  which  a  Pagan  land  might  equally  have 
attained  ;  it  is  not  the  civilization  to  which  a  nation  whose 
corner-stone  was  laid  on  the  basis  of  a  pure  Christian 


132  WOMAI*  IN  AMEKICA: 

faith  should  aspire.  Let  it  be  our  boast,  that  we  have 
placed  the  spiritual  above  the  physical — that  though 
our  houses  may  want  some  conveniences  and  luxuries 
common  abroad,  though  our  theatres  and  our  operas 
may  be  less  magnificent  than  those  of  other  lands — our 
schools  and  our  churches  are  more  numerous  and  better 
supported.  Let  us  acknowledge  that  the  outward  graces 
of  life,  and  what  we  are  accustomed  to  term  the  accom- 
plishments of  education,  are  found  in  higher  perfection 
with  a  fortunate  few  abroad,  than  with  us.  We  may 
willingly  consent  to  postpone  any  effort  to  compete  with 
their  possessors,  while  we  are  engaged  in  the  nobler  task 
of  educating  the  spiritual  natures  of  all  the  dwellers  in 
our  land— of  pouring  light  on  the  benighted  minds,  and 
clothing  with  "the  beauty  of  holiness"  the  debased 
spirits  sent  to  us  from  countries  boasting,  and  boasting 
justly,  their  higher  civilization.  We  do  not  undervalue 
this  civilization.  We  are  not  blind  to  the  grace  of  form 
or  the  splendor  of  coloring,  or  deaf  to  the  charms  of 
music,  or  insensible  to  the  thousand  luxuries  it  has  intro- 
duced. We  rejoice  to  see  some  in  our  own  land  achieve 
for  themselves  by  successful  industry,  the  power  of  com- 
manding these  luxuries.  We  look  with  pleasure,  nay, 
with  somewhat  of  honest  pride  on  the  success  of  our 


HEB  WORK  A?TD  HER  REWARD.  133 

countrymen,  on  the  stately  dwellings  rising  around  us. 
We  mark  with  satisfaction  the  improvements  in  architec- 
tural taste,  and  the  advances  in  all  that  may  minister  to 
comfort.  Especially  do  we  take  delight  in  finding  in 
these  dwellings  objects  for  the  gratification  of  the  higher 
tastes,  the  creations  of  the  qhisel  and  the  pencil,  lifting 
us  into  communion  with  the  artist  in  his  moments  of  in- 
spiration, and  those  silent  counsellors,  books,  in  which 
are  treasured  the  wisdom  of  ages.  No  cloud  dims  our 
satisfaction  in  the  observation  of  these  acquisitions,  till 
we  see  that  their  possessor  regards  them  as  having  trans- 
muted his  common  clay  into  the  fine  porcelain  of  earth, 
— that,  from  the  height  to  which  he  has  attained,  he 
looks  down  on  those  struggling,  even  as  he  did  but  a 
few  short  years  ago,  not  to  cheer  them  by  his  example, 
not  to  extend  to  them  a  helping  hand,  but  to  depress 
them  by  his  insolent  assumption,  and  to  provoke  them  to 
an  unwise  and  ruinous  expenditure  in  the  assertion  of 
that  equality  which  he  is  so  ready  to  deny.  It  is  to  this 
last  influence  of  the  arrogant  spirit  which  sudden  eleva- 
tion awakens  in  a  vulgar  mind,  that  we  owe  our  most 
urgent  social  evils.  From  this  it  proceeds  that  almost 
all  in  our  large  cities  live,  if  not  beyond,  at  least  to  the 
utmost  extent  of  their  incomes.  To  this  we  may  trace 
12 


134  WOMAN  LN"  AMEIIICA  : 

the  anxious  faces  we  meet  ever  and  again  in  our  walks ; 
to  this,  the  fretful  tempers  which  have  driven  peace  from 
the  once  happy  family;  to  this,  the  ruined  health  of 
women  whose  cheerful  smiles  once  made  the  sunlight  of 
their  homes.  We  do  not  mean  that  this  influence  is  evi- 
dent to  the  consciousness  of  each  who  thus  suffers  from 
it.  Many  of  these  sufferers  would,  we  doubt  not,  indig- 
nantly deny  its  control  over  their  actions.  They  will  tell 
you  they  but  do  what  is  common  for  others  in  their  cir- 
cumstances; they  ask  not  what  gave  the  impetus  to 
those  who  began  this  fearful  race — this  dance  of  death, 
as  it  has  proved  to  so  many.  But  will  not  their  secret 
hearts  bear  witness,  that  they  do  submit  to  much  wear- 
ing anxiety,  and  even  to  great  sacrifices  of  personal  com- 
fort, which  they  might  avoid  if  they  were  willing  to 
occupy  less  spacious  apartments,  to  tread  on  carpets  of 
more  homely  texture,  and  to  sit  at  tables  where  the 
equally  bounteous,  perhaps  the  more  bounteous  meal, 
was  served  in  less  costly  dishes  ? 

Permit  us,  in  illustration  of  this  subject,  to  present  a 
sketch  of  what  is  happening  every  day  in  our  midst.  A 
young  man — nay,  we  beg  pardon,  a  young  gentleman — 
who  has  been  accustomed  by  the  habits  and  the  language 
of  his  home,  to  consider  a  certain  style  of  living  essential  to 


HER  WORK  AND  HER  REWARD.  135 

the  maintenance  of  his  social  position,  marries  one  whose 
serene,  joyous  temper  gives  him  assurance  of  a  happy 
home.  Love  would  fain  build  a  palace  costly  as  Alad- 
din's for  the  loved  one,  but  as  love  has  no  credit  in  the 
market,  he  is  compelled  to  be  limited  in  his  arrange- 
ments by  the  amount  of  money  he  can  pay  or  promise. 

»  ;         •* 

At  least,  however,  he  will  do  the  utmost  that  he  honest- 
ly may  to  make  her  home  worthy  of  her.  He  looks 
around  among  his  acquaintances  possessing  about  the 
same  amount  of  wealth  as  himself  for  a  model  on  which 
to  form  his  manage,  and  in  accordance  with  prevailing 
custom,  a  house  much  larger  than  they  need  is  bought, 
or  hired,  and  furnished  with  at  least  as  much  regard  to 
show  as  comfort.  His  task  completed,  he  looks  upon  its 
result  with  pride  as  well  as  pleasure,  and  reflects  with 
complacency,  that  as  two  persons  will  want  but  little  at- 
tendance, and  no  great  outlay  in  the  supply  of  the  table, 
any  deficit  occasioned  by  this  first  great  draft  upon  their 
fortune,  will  soon  be  replaced.  Under  these  impressions 
their  married  life  begins  joyfully.  The  young  wife  soon 
•finds,  however,  that  the.  mistress  of  a  large  house  and 
splendid  furniture,  with  few  servants,  has  no  sinecure 
place.  Her  servants,  to  whom  she  had  perhaps  dreamed 
of  being  a  friend  and  guide,  whom  she  had  perhaps  once 


136  WOMAN  IN  AMEEICA: 

regarded  as  having  a'  right  to  some  little  time  for  the 
consideration  of  higher  objects  than  cooking  and  washing, 
sweeping  and  dusting,  become  in  her  eyes  only  useful 
machines,  valued  according  to  the  rapidity  and  accuracy 
with  which  they  perform  their  labors.  But  these  ma- 
chines are  human.  They  become  exhausted  by  labor, 
and  the  smiling,  ready,  cheerful  service  is  exchanged  for 

sullen  looks  and  movements.     Then  we  hear,  " has 

stayed  long  enough  with  us,  she  is  spoiled ;"  and  the 
first  expression  of  dissatisfaction  in  the  poor  wearied  girl, 
is  eagerly  seized  as  a  pretext  for  dismissing  her  and  sup- 
plying her  place  with  another  machine  whose  unworn 
springs  may  work  more  briskly.  But  this  is  not  the 
limit  of  the  evil.  An  increasing  family  brings  increased 
expenditure,  while  the  fortune  remains  unchanged.  Re- 
trenchment must  be  made  where  the  world  will  least 
perceive  it.  A  servant,  perhaps,  is  dismissed,  and  the 
wife  must  supply  by  her  increased  labor  the  place  thus 
vacated.  Farewell  now  to  the  cultivation  of  taste,  the 
improvement  of  intellect,  which  had  been  connected  in 
her  dreams  with  her  married  life.  Work — work — work, 
till  heart  and  hand  fail,  till  the  cloud  gather  on  her  once 
sunny  brow,  and  her  cheeks  grow  pale,  and  friendly  con- 
sumption come  to  give  her  rest  from  her  labors  in  the 


HER  WORK  AND  HER  REWARD.  137 

grave,  or  the  throbbing  brain  and  over-anxious  heart 
overpower  the  reason,  and  a  lunatic  asylum  receive  one 
more  miserable  inmate.  Think  not  this  is  an  exaggerated 
picture,  or  the  last  an  unusual  destination  under  such 
circumstances.  In  a  report  of  the  officers  for  the  Retreat 
of  the  Insane,  in  Hartford,  Connecticut,  which  lies  before 
us,  the  intelligent  and  humane  superintendent  and  phy- 
sician, Dr.  Butler,  says :  "  In  many  cases,  not  having 
received  in  early  life  a  judicious  physical  or  moral  train- 
ing for  her  new  and  arduous  station,  the  young  wife,  im- 
pelled by  affection  and  an  honest  pride  to  her  utmost 
efforts,  soon  finds  that,  with  her  increasing  family,  the 
burden  of  care  and  duties  increases ;  while  her  physical 
strength  and  capacity  of  endurance  diminish  even  in  a 
greater  ratio.  An  economy  sometimes  deemed  neces- 
sary, more  often  ill-judged  and  cruel,  leads  the  husband 
to  refrain  from  supplying  the  necessary  domestic  assist- 
ance ;  the  nurse  is  discharged  too  soon,  and  sometimes 

no  suitable  one  is  provided Thus  it  must 

naturally  follow,  that,  between  child-bearing,  nursing, 
and  the  accumulation  of  household  duties  and  drudgery, 
the  poor  heart-broken  and  disappointed  wife  loses,  in 
turn,  her  appetite,  her  rest,  and  her  strength ;  her  ner- 
vous system  is  prostrated,  and  sinking  under  her  burden, 
12* 


138  WOMAN  IN  AMEEICA: 

she  seeks  refuge  in  a  lunatic  hospital.     This  process  of- 
inducing  insanity  is  by  no  means  limited  to  the  above- 
mentioned  classes  ;  the  same  thing,  differing  more  in  de- 
gree than  in  manner,  is  often  seen  elsewhere" 

Now  let  us  see  what  might  have  heen  the  destiny  of 
this  same  woman.  Suppose  that  some  good  angel  had 
whispered  to  the  young  lover — "  Ye,  who  are  a  world  to 
each  other,  need  not  care  for  the  world's  opinion  of  your 
home."  Imagine  him,  then,  selecting  for  their  future 
abode  a  house  convenient  and  comfortable,  rather  than 
large  or  showy.  Good  taste  is  combined  with  economy 
in  its  furniture.  If  in  any  thing  he  is  tempted  to  over- 
step his  prescribed  limits,  it  is  not  in  those  rooms  that 
are  to  meet  the  curious  eyes  of  the  indifferent,  but  in  that 
innermost  shrine  of  the  sanctuary  of  his  home,  to  which 
only  the  dearly  loved  shall  be  admitted.  He  may  in- 
dulge himself  in  adorning  the  walls  of  this  room  with  an 
exquisite  painting,  or  in  placing  in  it  some  article  of 
graceful  luxury.  For  this  simple  home  he  will  have 
abundant  attendance.  In  this  outlay  he  rejects  all  the 
whispered  cautions  of  economy,  aye,  even  though  they 
come  to  his  ear  from  the  voice  he  best  loves.  "  Not  a 
cent,"  he  says,  "  for  show,  but  every  thing  for  comfort" 
— and  what  comfort  so  dear  to  him  as  to  secure  the  com- 


HER  WORK  AM)  HER  REWARD.  139 

paiiionsbip  of  her  he  loves — to  have  her  meet  him  with 
unexhausted  powers — to  give  her  the  leisure  necessary 
for  the  continued  improvement  of  her  mind,  and  for  the 
preservation  of  her  youth  in  its  fresh,  joyous  spring  ? 

And  she,  whose  faculties  have  thus  found  a  congenial 
soil — shall  she  idly  enjoy  the  gifts  of  Heaven  ?  She  will 
not,  if  she  be  worthy  of  the  home  we  have  endeavored  to 
describe.  Of  that  home  she  is  to  be  the  presiding  genius. 
From  her  its  spirit  will  be  caught.  She  cannot  make  it 
an  Eden,  for  its  flowers  will  wither.  Sickness  and  sor- 
row and  death  will  enter  it ;  but  in  the  warmth  and  light 
reflected  on  it  from  the  sunshine  of  her  soul,  shall  grow 
all  pure  and  gentle  affections — no  rivalry,  no  vain  ambi- 
tion can  live  there.  There  no  hurrying  step  and  anxious 
look  shall  excite  in  the  mind  of  a  visiter  distrust  of  his 
welcome ;  but  in  the  aspect  of  all  around  him  he  shall 
read  the  salutation—"  Peace  be  unto  you !"  While 
refusing  to  waste  her  strength,  sour  her  temper,  and 
burden  her  domestics,  in  a  vain  effort  to  seem  to  live  as 
those  do  who  can  command  an  income  twice  as  large  as 
her  own,  she  will,  by  a  wise  economy,  make  her  resources 
available  for  the  largest  possible  amount  of  comfort  for 
all  the  inmates  of  her  home.  Nor  will  she  be  unmindful 
of  beauty  in  its  arrangements.  It"  is  her  bower  of  love, 


140  WOMAN  EST  AMEEICA  : 

and,  as  such,  she  will  delight  to  decorate  it  by  her  pure 
taste.  Yet  all  outward  adornments  shall  be  subservient 
to  spiritual  beauty.  No  costly  luxury  or  treasure  of  art 
shall  be  purchased  by  her  with  the  pence  wrung  from 
the  honest  wages  of  laborious  poverty.  The  contentment 
that  sits  upon  her  husband's  brow,  the  joyous  faces  of 
her  children,  the  smiling,  grateful  countenances  of  her 
servants,  the  esteem  of  the  friends  who  love  to  partake 
the  serene  enjoyments  of  her  fireside,  the  blessings  of  the 
poor  to  whom  her  benevolence  is  extended — these  are 
her  luxuries,  these  the  treasures  she  covets. 

Such  a  home  is  a  temple  from  which  anthems  of  praise 
are  continually  ascending  to  the  Most  High.  And  is  it  a 
Utopian  dream,  that  such  may  be  the  prevailing  char- 
acter of  American  homes  ?  It  is  a  dream  which  must 
become  a  reality,  when  our  social  life  shall  be  modelled 
on  the  principles  we  have  endeavored  to  unfold  in  this 
little  volume.  There  are  few,  comparatively,  in  our  land 
who  may  not  hope  by  industry,  sobriety,  and  economy, 
to  obtain  an  income  sufficient  to  lift  them  above  sordid 
poverty — few  who  may  not  receive  a  good  school  educa- 
tion— few  who,  if  they  will  relinquish  all  desire  for  a 
display  disproportioned  to  their  means,  may  not  com- 
mand the  comforts  of  life  by  their  labor,  and  yet  reserve 


HEE  WORK  AND  HER  REWARD.     141 

some  time  for  spiritual  cultivation.  But  while  the  wife 
and  daughters  of  him  who  but  yesterday  plodded  with 
weary  step  and  anxious  heart  through  our  places  of  busi- 
ness, look  down  to-day  from  their  gilded  saloons  with 

haughty  coldness  upon  those  who  have  been  less  fortu- 

• 
nate  in  the  race  of  life — and  while  the  first,  whatever 

may  be  their  ignorance,  inanity,  or  vulgarity,  are  received 
in  society  with  a  distinction  which  the  last,  whatever  be 
their  personal  qualities,  would  vainly  claim,  there  will  be 
few  so  self-sustained,  few  so  truly  noble,  as  to  relinquish 
all  social  consideration,  rather  than  debase  themselves  by 
a  contest  in  which  success  can  be  gained  only  by  a  loss 
of  integrity,  of  self-respect,  and  of  peace. 

On  the  women  of  the  United  States,  especially  on 
those  of  the  Middle  and  Eastern  States,  dwelling  in  cities 
where  all  the  varied  forms  of  life  are  brought  closely  in 
contact,  does  it  chiefly,  if  not  wholly  depend,  whether 
our  country  is  to  assume  a  social  attitude  in  harmony 
with  her  political  pretensions ;  whether  our  civilization  is 
to  be  of  a  nobler  sort  than  any  the  world  has  yet  known, 
a  civilization  founded  on  the  brotherhood  of  man,  in 
which  the  poorest  laborer  shall  be  recognised  as  an  heir 
of  immortality,  a  child  of  God,  and  as  such  shall  have 
room  for  the  growth  of  his  spiritual  faculties,  and  be 


142  WOMAN  IN  AMERICA:, 

respected  according  to  the  advancement  of  those  facul- 
ties ;  or  whether  ours  shall  be  a  vain  attempt  to  cope 
with  the  civilization  of  feudal  lands,  in  the  gorgeous  dis- 
plays by  which  they  strike  the  senses  and  win  the 
homage  of  the  uncultivated.  In  choosing  the  first  of 
these  forms  of  development,  we  ask  you  to  relinquish  no 
luxury,  to  sacrifice  no  enjoyment,  which  your  resources 
can  command  without  pressing  on  your  brother  man. 
Build  palaces,  if  you  can- — fill  them  with  all  that  can 
charm  the  eye,  delight  the  ear,  or  gratify  sinlessly  any 
sense ;  but  forget  not  that  you  are  stewards  of  God,  that 
you  are  surrounded  by  your  brethren,  that  you  have 
been  brought,  by  a  wise  Providence,  to  a  point  of  time 
and  space  when  and  where  you  may  act  most  easily  and 
efficiently  in  accordance  with  the  great  principles  of  our 
Christian  faith,  principles  reiterated  in  our  national  creed. 
Remember  that  no  display  is  consistent  with  true  nobility 
— we  will  leave  out  of  the  question  the  higher  motive  of 
Christian  principle — which  compels  you  to  be  a  hard 
task-mistress  to  others ;  which  forbids  you  to  make  such 
a  remuneration  for  their  labor  as  you  feel  in  your  heart 
it  deserves  ;  or  which  obliges  you  to  claim  from  them  for 
that  which  you  do  give,  such  entire  devotion  of  their 
time  and  faculties  as  will  leave  them  no  hope  of  future 


HER  WORK  AND  HER  REWARD.     143 

advancement,  no  possibility  of  spiritual  cultivation.  If 
you  have  been  placed  upon  an  eminence,  let  the  reflection 
that  you  cannot,  like  some  of  other  lands,  claim  an  inde- 
feasible and  divine  right  to  your  position,  make  you  con- 
siderate of  those  who  are  toiling  painfully  towards  you ; 
and  let  them  not  find,  when  they  have  elevated  them- 
selves to  your  level,  that  you  have  so  walled  yourselves 
in  that  they  may  not  stand  by  your  side. 

Our  fathers,  captivated  by  the  beautiful  ideal  of  a 
spiritual  freedom  incompatible  with  the  old  forms  of  life, 
followed,  as  we  have  seen,  the  angel  of  then*  vision 
across  unknown  seas,  to  the  untrodden  wilderness  of  a 
new  world.  To  them  the  rudest  hut  on  which  that 
beatific  presence  rested  was  a  nobler  and  a  prouder 
dwelling  than  the  palace  of  a  king.  What  was  to  them 
the  coarse  garb,  the  scanty  food,  the  rude  shelter,  for 
which  they  had  exchanged  a  life  of  luxury,  if  they  won 
in  the  exchange  the  right  to  "call  no  man  master  on 
earth,"  and  to  give  the  intelligent  and  joyful  worship  of 
free  souls  to  "Him  who  was  their  master  in  Heaven?" 
And  have  we,  their  daughters,  nothing  akin  in  our  na- 
tures to  these  lofty  spirits  ?  Shall  we  woo  back  to  the 
fair  homes  which  they  bequeathed  us  a  despotism  sterner 
than  that  from  which  they  fled  ?  Shall  we  place  »the 


144  WOMAN  IN  AMERICA: 

idols  of  earthly  pomp  and  power  on  the  pure  shrines 
which  they  devoted  to  the  spirit  of  universal  freedom  ? 
Say  not  that  theirs  were  the  feelings  and  the  work  of 
men.  Women  delicately  reared — women  nurtured  in  the 
peaceful  and  luxurious  homes  of  England,  accompanied 
them  hither.  To  these  women  posterity  has  raised  no 
monument,  history  recorded  no  eulogium  ;  yet  when  we 
think  of  them  as  pursuing,  within  their  forest  homes, 
their  gentle,  household  tasks,  sometimes,  it  may  be, 
waking  the  silent  echoes  with  their  hymns  of  lofty  cheer 
— even  while  in  every  whisper  of  the  winds  they  must 
have  dreamed  of  the  Indian's  stealthy  step,  in  every  sud- 
den call  fancied  his  cry  of  death — they  seem  to  us  not 
less  heroic  than  those  who,  buckling  on  their  armor, 
went  forth  to  do  battle  with  their  savage  foe ;  nay, 
were  not  theirs  among  those  circumstances  in  which, 
"  to  be  still,  demands  immeasurably  higher  power  than 
to  act  ?"* 

What,  think  you,  was  the  American  life,  in  their  un- 
derstanding of  its  import?  Was  it  a  life  of  unsubstan- 
tial forms — a  life  of  selfish,  individual  aggrandizement  ? 
Rather,  was  it  not  a  life  of  earnest  purpose,  of  noble  aim 
— a  life  of  self-sacrifice  for  the  assertion  of  great  princi- 
ples, with  which  the  advancement  of  the  human  race 


HER  WORK  AND  HER  REWARD.  145 

was  indissolubly  connected?  Such  we  believe  it  was, 
and  such  would  we  have  ours  to  be.  We  would,  like 
them,  place  before  us  a  noble  ideal,  and  go  steadily  for- 
ward to  its  attainment,  even  though  it  demanded  the 
sacrifice  of  all  which  the  world  is  accustomed  to  value 
most.  And  we  would  resemble  them,  not  only  in  the 
object  sought,  but  in  their  manner  of  seeking  it.  They 
claimed  no  place  in  council-halls  or  amid  embattled  hosts 
— "their  voices  were  not  heard  in  the  street."  Their 
power  was  in  the  example  of  their  cheerful  endurance, 
and  in  the  silent  influences  of  the  homes  over  which  they 
ruled.  In  those  homes,  men  breathed  an  atmosphere 
which  gave  strength  to  every  lofty  impulse,  and  decision 
to  every  noble  aim.  From  such  homes  men  might  come 
forth  hard  and  stern,  with  too  little  of  the  spirit  of  Him 
who  wept  over  the  unbelief  of  the  Jews,  and  refused  to 
pronounce  sentence  of  condemnation  against  a  guilty 
woman ;  but  in  them,  they  sacrificed  to  no  little  vanity, 
frittered  away  their  powers  in  no  sensual  pursuits. 
Without  were  strife,  and  danger,  and  bloodshed — all 
that  make  men  hard  ;  but  within  were  purity  and  peace 
— the  peace  which  ever  dwells  with  those  who  live  for 
the  performance  of  duty. 

There  are  some,  perhaps,  who  will  say — "  This  is  all 
13 


146  WOMAN  IN  AMEEICA I 

true ;  but  it  is  only  great  occasions  that  give  opportunity 
for  the  exhibition  of  great  qualities.  Those  of  whom 
you  speak  have  fought  the  battle  and  won  the  victory ; 
nothing  remains  for  us,  but  to  enjoy  the  fruits  of  their 
labors." 

And  is  it  indeed  so  ?  Look  abroad — see  how  the  op- 
pressed of  other  lands  are  fleeing  hither,  as  to  a  "city  of 
refuge.  Ignorance,  and  error,  and  superstition,  follow 
fast  in  their  rear.  Is  there,  in  such  circumstances,  no 
opportunity  for  the  exhibition  of  great  qualities^for  self- 
denying  generosity,  for  patient  endurance,  for  courageous 
action  in  the  great  cause  of  human  happiness  ?  Will  you 
object  that  these,  the  natives  of  another  land,  have  no 
claim  on  you  for  the  exercise  of  such  qualities  ?  Carlyle, 
in  his  own  quaint,  yet  powerful  style,  tells  an  anecdote 
which  may  give  a  sufficient  answer  to  such  an  objection. 
Here  it  is :  "A  poor  Irish  widow,  her  husband  having 
died  in  one  of  the  lanes  of  Edinburgh,  went  forth,  with 
her  three  children,  bare  of  all  resource,  to  solicit  help 
from  the  charitable  establishments  of  that  city.  At  this 
charitable  establishment  and  then  at  that  she  was  refused, 
referred  from  one  to  the  other,  helped  by  none,  till  she 
had  exhausted  them  all ;  till  her  strength  and  heart 
failed  her:  she  sank  down  in  typhus  fever,  died,  and 


HEE  WOEK  A1ST)  HEE  EEWAED.  147 

infected  her  lane  with  fever,  so  that  seventeen  other  per- 
sons died  of  fever  there  in  consequence.  The  humane 
physician  asks,  thereupon,  as  with  a  heart  too  full  for 
speaking — Would  it  not  have  been  economy  to  help  this 
poor^dfrw  ?  She  took  typhus  fever,  and  killed  seven- 
teen of  «ou !  Very  curious.  The  forlorn  Irish  widow 
applied  tojer  fellow-creatures  as  if.  saying — '  Behold,  I 
amjsiiiking^ar^of  help  :  ye  must  help  me  !  I  am  your 
sister,  bone  bf  ycmr  bone ;  one  God  made  us :  ye  must 
help  m^T  They  answer — '  ^  <^  impossible  :  thou  art 
notefeter  of  ours.'  But  she  proves  her  sisterhood ;  her 
typnus  fever  kills  them  ;  they  actually  were  her  brothers, 

though  denying  it !" 
.5V^    f    & 

AncLso  are  these  multitudes  flocking  to  our  shores  our 
brethren,  our  sisters.  Ignorant,  degraded,  as  many  of 
them  are,  they  are  yet  sharers  of  our  nature,  and  if  we 
refuse  them  our  aid,  they  will  prove  it,  even  as  did  the 
poor  Irish  widow,  for  their  ignorance  and  vice  shall  infect 
us  ;  or  if  our  matured  powers  resist  the  influence  bf  the 
moral  malaria  they  create,  our  children  shall  fall  victims 
to  it. 

But,  perhaps  some  will  say,  "  We  see  the  truth  as  you 
do ;  the  course  you  suggest  is  noble,  the  goal  to  which 
it  leads,  '  a  consummation  devoutly  to  be  wished ;'  but 


148  WOMAN  IN  AMERICA  I 

we  have  wandered  too  far  from  that  course  to  return  to 
it — between  our  present  position  and  that  to  which  you 
would  point  us,  lies  a  great  gulf,  a  gulf  which  we  dare 
not  even  attempt  to  pass."  To  such  persons  we  reply, 
if  you  do  indeed  acknowledge  that  your  present  position 
is  wrong — that,  having  once  occupied  it,  you  can  never 
hope  to  attain  to  that  beauty  and  nobleness  which  your 
soul  perceives  and  admires,  and  for  which,  as  this  very 
admiration  proves,  you  were  created — strive  to  win  for 
your  children  at  least,  that  better  part.  You  shudder  at 
those  Pagans  who  cast  their  children  into  the  cold  waters 
of  the  Ganges,  or  the  fiery  embrace  of  Moloch,  yet,  by 
all  the  influences  of  your  present  life,  you  are  preparing 
for  yours,  not  a  death-pang  short — though  sharp,  follow- 
ed by  a  certain  entrance  into  the  Paradise  of  your  faith 
— but  an  eternity  of  icy  selfishness  or  burning  passion. 

Look  at  the  young  immortal  as  it  lies  so  fresh  and  fair 
within  your  arms,  the  purity  of  heaven  on  its  brow,  and 
nothing  of  earth  within  its  heart  but  the  love  with  which 
it  leaps  to  the  sound  of  the  mother- voice  and  the  tender 
smile  of  the  mother-eyes ;  in  that  little  being,  scarce  yet 
conscious  of  existence,  are  enfolded  powers  to  bless  or  to 
curse,  extended  as  the  universe,  enduring  as  eternity. 
The  hand  which  now  clings  so  feebly,  yet  so  tenaciously, 


HER  WORK  AXD  HER  REWARD.     149 

to  your  own,  may  uphold  or  overthrow  an  empire — the 
voice  whose  weak  cry  scarce  wins  the  attention  of  any 
but  a  mother's  ear,  may  one  day  stir  a  nation's  heart,  and 
give  the  first  impulse  to  actions  which  will  hasten  or  re- 
tard for  ages  the  world's  millennial  glories.  And  will 
you,  nay,  dare  you  strive  to  compress  these  powers  to 
the  dimensions  of  a  drawing-room,  and  to  present  its 
paltry  triumphs  as  the  highest  reward  of  their  exercise  ? 
The  daughter  whose  bounding  step  and  joyous  prattle 
make  the  music  of  your  home — shall  she  walk  through 
the  world's  dark  and  troubled  ways,  an  angel  of  charity, 
blessing  and  blessed,  warming  into  life  by  he^r  cordial 
sympathies,  all  those  pure,  unselfish  affections,  by  which 
we  know  ourselves  allied  to  heaven,  but  which  fade,  and 
too  often  die  in  the  atmosphere  of  earth — shall  "her  path 
be  as  that  of  the  just,  shining  more  and  more  unto  the^ 
perfect  day,"  and  shall  she  pass  at  length  gently,  serene- 
ly, with  peace  in  her  soul,  from  her  earthly  home  to  that 
fairer  home  above  of  which  she  has  made  it  no  unworthy 
type  ? — or,  shall  she  be  the  belle  of  one,  two,  or  it  may 
be,  three  seasons,  nurturing  in  herself  and  others  the 
baleful  passions  of  envy  and  hate,  of  impurity  and  pride  ? 
Shall  her  life,  with  all  its  capabilities  of  good  and  ill,  of 

joy  and  sorrow,  be  devoted  to  frivolities  which  she  would 

13* 


150  WOMAN  ITT  AMEEICA  : 

herself  blush  to  acknowledge  as  her  aim ;  and  shall 
death  find  her  in  the  midst  of  such  pursuits,  and  bear 
her,  vainly  struggling — whither?  Do  you  shrink  from 
such  a  picture  ?  Do  you  ask,  how  may  we  secure  for 
our  children  the  first  and  nobler  destiny  ?  It  is  a  ques- 
tion of  deep  and  solemn  import,  for  whose  full  answer 
we  must  direct  you  to  the  Book  of  Life ;  but  some 
things  are  so  obviously  necessary  to  your  feeblest  efforts 
to  attain  such  a  result,  that  we  will  not  hesitate  to  state 
them.  And  first,  you  must  cease  to  regard  your  chil- 
dren as  instruments  for  the  gratification  of  your  own 
vanity.  Torture  not  the  childish  form,  instil  not  the 
poison  of  envy  and  vanity  into  the  childish  heart,  that 
your  ear  may  be  soothed  by  the  soft  flatteries  of  some 
fashionable  circle.  Is  your  child  clothed  with  a  plain 
exterior — neither  depress  her  by  your  regret,  nor  seek  to 
win  for  her,  by  the  splendor  of  her  dress,  an  admiration 
which  her  person  would  fail  to  excite.  Rather,  teach 
her  that  there  is  a  loveliness  more  to  be  desired  than  any 
external  beauty,  and  that  the  ornament  of  a  meek  and 
quiet  spirit  is  of  more  price  than  rubies.  Is  she  beauti- 
ful— teach  her  that  this,  too,  like  every  other  gift  of 
Heaven,  is  valuable  only  for  the  good  it  may  enable  us 
to  do,  only  as  a  means  of  influence  over  other  hearts. 


HER  WORK  AND  HER  REWARD.     151 

In  physical  education  be  more  careful  of  health  than  of 
fashion ;  we  do  not  say  of  beauty,  for  between  the  laws  of 
health  and  of  beauty  there  is  no  want  of  harmony,  while 
fashion  often  contradicts  both.  It  requires  little  reflec- 
tion to  perceive  what  must  be  the  influence  on  a  child's 
mind  of  having  the  free  movements  of  nature  impeded, 
and  present  discomfort  and  the  apprehension  of  future 
disease  inflicted  on  her,  that  her  form  may  be  forced  into 
the  mould  prescribed  by  the  caprice  of  ton. 

As  the  first  dawn  of  childhood  brightens  into  day — as 
the  faculties  expand  and  the  observation  is  quickened — 
you  can  no  longer  hope  to  form  your  child  to  a  nobler  life, 
while  you  continue  yourself  to  tread  the  beaten  round  of 
frivolous  amusements  and  selfish  pleasures.  How  can  you 
preface  a  day  devoted  to  such  objects,  by  the  lesson  that 
we  were  created  to  be  co-workers  with  God  in  the  eleva- 
tion of  our  own  natures  and  those  of  our  brethren ;  that 
the  day  has  been  lost  to  us  in  which  we  have  accom- 
plished no  useful  work,  subtracted  nothing  from  the  evil, 
or  added  nothing  to  the  good,  in  our  world  ?  Should 
you  even  summon  courage  to  utter  such  sentiments,  con- 
tradicted as  they  would  be  by  every  hour  of  your  lives, 
could  you  expect  them  to  make  any  impression  on  the 
minds  to  which  they  would  be  addressed  ?  Surely  not. 


152     .  WOMAN  IN  AMERICA  : 

If  it  be  indeed  impossible  to  make  your  life  a  fit  model, 
and  your  home  a  fit  school  for  the  inculcation  of  the 
principles  you  approve,  you  must  be  content  to  see  the 
lives  of  your  children  shadowed  by  the  clouds  which 
have  settled  so  darkly  over  your  own ;  to  see  their  earn- 
est purposes  and  nobler  aspirations  exchanged  for  the 
false  and  the  frivolous  conventionalisms,  of  which  you 
have  learned,  by  your  own  sad  experience,  that  their 
charm  soon  ceases,  and  their  despotism  never  ends ;  or 
you  must  sacrifice  their  society,  and  seek  for  them  a 
model  and  a  home  elsewhere.  Schools  there  are — and 
•we  rejoice  to  believe  that  they  are  becoming  more  numer- 
ous— in  which  the  principles  of  a  true  Christian  civiliza- 
tion are  inculcated,  in  which  the  young  are  taught  that 
no  extrinsic  advantages  of  wealth  or  station  will  atone 
for  the  want  of  those  personal  qualities  that  command 
respect — schools  in  which  the  rich  and  the  poor  meet 
together,  and  that  pupil  is  most  prized  who  promises, 
by  the  highest  intellectual  power  and  the  purest  moral 
principle,  to  make  the  most  useful  member  of  society. 
It  is  by  the  pupils  of  such  schools,  that  the  American 
life — a  life  of  usefulness,  of  true  refinement,  and  of  wise 
philanthropy — must  be  instituted  and  sustained.  In  the 
support  of  such  schools,  therefore,  we  find  the  most  en  • 

•*-  x 

.  .  • 


HER  WORK  AND  HER  REWARD.     153 

couraging  promise  for  the  future  destiny  of  our  country 
and  of  the  world." 

We  are  not  advocating  the  principles  of  a  savage  de- 
mocracy ;  we  would  not,  if  we  could,  force  into  uncon- 
genial association  intelligence  and  ignorance,  rudeness 
and  refinement.  We  have  spoken  of  the  union  of  the 
laboring  hand  with  the  thoughtful  mind  and  the  cul- 
tivated manner,  but  we  have  nowhere  insinuated  the 
desire  to  see  vulgarity  and  refinement  brought  into  un- 
natural connection.  We  would  set  in  motion  influences 
by  which  vulgarity,  whether  clothed  in  the  garb  of 
prince  or  peasant,  whether  seated  in  high  places  or  plod- 
ding through  lanes  and  fields,  should  be  banished  from 
our  land.  We  desire  that  the  arrangements  of  our  social 
life  may  be  such  that  each,  in  his  own  sphere,  may  have 
room  to  develop  himself  freely,  and  with  such  aids  as  will 
give  to  that  development  a  right  direction.  Esteeming 
the  glorious  ray  kindled  by  the  breath  of  the  Almighty 
beyond  the  feeble  glimmer  of  a  diamond,  we  would  have 
our  social  life  adapted  to  cherish  and  to  exhibit  the  spirit 
which  dwells  in  man,  rather  than  the  clothing  which  en- 
velops him.  We  would  have  our  conventional  arrange- 
ments so  modified  as  no  longer  to  press  out  of  sight  all 
that  is  noblest  among  us ;  no  longer  to  set  up  a  golden 


154  WOMAN  IN  AMERICA: 

calf  for  worship  in  the  very  presence  of  the  most  sub- 
lime manifestations  of  the  Divine  Spirit;  no  longer, 
by  making  idleness  and  display  the  terms  of  social  dis- 
tinction, at  once  to  stimulate  the  passion  for  wealth  and 
check  the  honest  and  lawful  efforts  for  its  acquisition, 
giving  birth  to  wild  speculations  and  fraudulent  practices, 
to  misery,  and  madness,  and  crime. 

It  has  been  said  that  in  our  land,  the  child  of  the  rich 
man  is  often  father  to  the  poor  man.  This  more  than 
usual  instability  of  fortune  is  probably  the  result  of  that 
ambition  for  display  to  which  we  have  already  so  often 
alluded.  We  note  it  now,  however,  not  to  investigate 
its  cause,  but  to  use  it  as  an  incentive  to  all,  in  the  midst 
of  riches,  to  cultivate  hi  .themselves  and  in  their  children, 
consideration  for  those  less  fortunate.  'Let  them  remem- 
ber that  their  children,  or  their  children's  children,  may 
reap  the  benefit  of  the  general  inculcation  of  such  a  sen- 
timent. 

A  motive  nobler  but  less  influential,  we  fear,  might 
be  found  in  that  patriotism  which  has  become  in  mod- 
ern times  a  word  of  light  value.  We  are  told  some- 
times that  this  is  an  emotion  incompatible  with  that  uni- 
versal philanthropy  inculcated  by  the  gospel  of  Christ. 
We  fear,  however,  that  we  have  exchanged  the  old  Ro- 


HER  WORK  AND  HER  REWARD.  155 

f 

man  devotion  to  our  own  land,  not  for  a  wider  but  for  a 

narrower  sentiment — for  one  which  begins,  continues,  and 
ends,  in  self.  The  objects  which  we  have  commended 
should  be  alike  dear  to  us  as  Americans  and  as  Christian 
philanthropists,  since  they  would  prepare  our  country,  by 
the  influence  of  a  thorough  public  instruction  and  the 
more  enduring  influence  of  its  homes,  to  become  the 
source  of  blessing  to  the  world. 

The  dignity  of  labor,  the  superiority  of  a  civilization 
which  shall  look  to  the  moral  and  intellectual  cultivation 
of  all,  over  that  which  presents  evidence  of  the  refine- 
ments in  luxury  and  art  enjoyed  by  a  few ;  these  are  the 
ideas  we  have  striven  to  enforce".  The  conception  still 
stands  before  us — noble,  beautiful,  as  when  first  it  lured 
us  to  undertake  its  presentation.  The  task  has  been 
fulfilled,  imperfectly  we  are  conscious,  yet  with  an  honest, 
earnest  effort.  The  world's  rushing  tide  may  drown  our 
feeble  voice  for  a  time,  but  if  we  have  spoken  true  words, 
as  we  believe,  they  will  not  be  lost ;  some  faint  echo  of 
their  tone  may  perchance  fall  on  the  ear  and  stir  the 
heart  of  one  who  will  give  them  worthier  utterance, 
So  BE  IT. 

THE  END. 


«  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 

Los  Angeles 


I.RLCIRC 


OCT 


URV  CIRC 

OGT  2  5  1993 


DEC  2  7 


315 


3   1158  00017   7419 


H 


I8w 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FAC 

A  A    000981244     7 


